TREATMENT OF HERPES VIRUS INFECTION USING ANTIVIRAL AGENTS

5. TREATMENT OF HERPES ZOSTER USING HUMAN INTERFERON-β AND ACYCLOVIR COMBINATION THERAPY

Abstract

To study the clinical efficacy of acyclovir-human interferon-β combination against herpes zoster and postherpetic neuralgia, 7 cases were treated with this combination, while 11 cases were administered acyclovir only as control. The severity of the residual pain at 1 month after onset was evaluated in both groups.
One of the 7 cases treated with acyclovir-interferon combination had severe postherpetic neuralgia, although 3 of the 11 cases of the control group had such severe residual pain.
These therapy could be performed without any serious side effects such as high fever, abnormalities of laboratory data, etc., except that a transient mild elevation of serum transaminase level was observed in one case.
Complement-fixing antibody titres against varicella-zoster virus were markedly elevated (128×<) in patients with severe post-herpetic neuralgia.
The present study was performed on relatively small numbers of patients with herpes zoster infection, and the clinical efficacy was not clearly evident, although the significance of further study on acyclovir-interferon combination therapy against herpes zoster was implicated.