Treatment
Birdshot chorioretinopathy is quite resistant to treatment. Immunosuppressant therapy with corticosteroid-sparing drugs has been somewhat effective in slowing down the progressive inflammation associated with the disorder, preserving visual intregrity as much as possible. Long-term use of such medications must be closely monitored, however, due to the discomforting, and potentially debilitating and life-threatening side-effects.
Recently, the therapeutic monoclonal antibody daclizumab has proven to be a quite effective treatment option for birdshot chorioretinopathy. Substantial reduction, and even stabilization of both vitreous inflammation and retinal vasculitis has been evident via electroretinography, during daclizumab therapy. Loss of visual acuity unrelated to the inflammation caused by the disorder, however, often remains unchanged despite usage of the drug. Contraindications and adverse side-effects are always a factor, as well. Daclizumab was discontinued by Hoffman La Roche on Sept 01, 2009, and is no longer available to the US market.
Read more about this topic: Birdshot Chorioretinopathy
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“If the study of all these sciences, which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“A regular council was held with the Indians, who had come in on their ponies, and speeches were made on both sides through an interpreter, quite in the described mode,—the Indians, as usual, having the advantage in point of truth and earnestness, and therefore of eloquence. The most prominent chief was named Little Crow. They were quite dissatisfied with the white man’s treatment of them, and probably have reason to be so.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)