High-dose intravenous immunoglobulins in the treatment of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome and Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis in Chinese patients: a retrospective study of 82 cases

Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS) and Toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) are drug-induced diseases with a low incidence but high mortality. While there is no standard treatment, corticosteroids and intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) therapy have beeen widely used, with controversy. Our objective was to summarize the etiology and therapeutic regimen of SJS or TEN in 82 hospitalized patients in China. A retrospective study was performed on 82 patients who were diagnosed with SJS or TEN and hospitalized in Peking Union Medical College Hospital from July 1994 to August 2009. Of them, 24 were treated with IVIG plus corticosteroids (IVIG group) and the other 58 were treated with corticosteroids only (corticosteroids group). SCORTEN was used to evaluate the severity and prognosis of the patients. The efficacy of therapeutic modalities was assessed by the following parameters: starting and the maximum dose of corticosteroids, cumulative dose of corticosteroids before tapering, cumulative dose of IVIG, days of corticosteroid application before its tapering and the hospitalization days. The common agents triggering SJS/TEN in these patients were non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (31 cases), anti-epileptics (18 cases), antibiotics (14 cases), antipodagrics (4 cases), sulfanilamides (4 cases) and others (11 cases), respectively. Carbamazepine was the most common drug, and induced 15 cases of SJS/TEN. The SCORTEN was significantly higher in the IVIG group than that in the corticosteroid group (2.0 +/- 1.7 vs 0.8 +/- 1.0, P = 0.001). Whereas no differences were observed between the two groups in the parameters including starting and maximum dose of corticosteroids, cumulative dose and the number of application days of corticosteroids before tapering and hospitalization days. However, in patients whose SCORTEN scores were 2, application of IVIG and corticosteroids shortened the duration of hospitalization from 26.4 +/- 9.5 d to 18.1 +/- 5.3 d (P < 0.05). No significant difference was observed in the incidence of complications between the two groups (54.2% vs 39.7%, P > 0.05). The actual mortalities were 12.5% in the IVIG group and 3.4% in corticosteroid group respectively, which were significantly lower than the predicted values (22.0% and 7.2%, respectively). Standardized mortality ratio (SMR) analysis showed a trend to a lower actual mortality (not significant) with corticosteroid treatment than the predicted mortality (SMR = 0.480; 95% CI: 0.075-1.923) and combination therapy had a tendency to reduce the mortality (not significant) rate of TEN (SMR = 0.569; 95% CI: 0.318-1.910). No significant difference in SMR was found between the two groups (P = 0.1474). Survival analysis showed that a favorable overall survival was associated with younger age (P = 0.0405). Our data indicated that early application of corticosteroids presented beneficial effects on SJS/TEN, and that combination therapy of corticosteroids and IVIG achieved a better therapeutic effect than the administration of corticosteroids alone. We recommend early treatment with IVIG at total doses of more than 2 g/kg in SJS/TEN patients whose SCORTEN are higher than 0.