Successful treatment with cyclosporin administration for persistent benign migratory glossitis

We herein describe a 54 year-old female patient with a 5-year history of persistent and painful benign migratory glossitis (BMG), which was remarkably improved by systemic administration of cyclosporin. She had noted some white patches leaving smooth denuded red areas with whitish elevated borders on the dorsum of her tongue, and finally felt strong pain. The lesion was refractory to the previous treatment with topical corticosteroid treatment for the last 2 years. Because clinicopathological findings were compatible with BMG, systemic administration of 20 mg/day prednisolone and topical 0.1% dexamethasone application were started, however, she suffered a severe relapse after tapering the dosage of predonisolone to 10 mg/day. Because some investigations have suggested that BMG is an oral manifestation of psoriasis, we introduced cyclosporin administration. The systemic treatment of cyclosporin microemulsion pre-concentrate, 3 mg/kg/day, resulted in a satisfactory improvement. Two months later, we could reduce cyclosporin microemulsion pre-concentrate dosage to 1.5 mg/kg/day for maintenance therapy, and the disease has been well controlled so far.

15 November 2006
Masatoshi ABE, Yoko SOGABE, Tomoko SYUTO, Hirohisa ISHIBUCHI, Yoko YOKOYAMA, Osamu ISHIKAWA
Department of Dermatology, Gunma University Graduate School of Medicine, Maebashi, Japan
Correspondence: Masatoshi Abe, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Dermatology, Gunma University Graduate School of Medicine, 3-39-22, Showa-machi, Maebashi 371-8511, Japan. Email: masaabe@med.gunma-u.ac.jp
The Journal of Dermatology