ABSTRACT
Intravenous immunoglobulins (IVIG) are used clinically for both substitution and immunomodulatory therapy. Whereas they are only licensed for a limited number of diagnoses, a large array of empirical applications is available which includes various inflammatory and autoimmune disorders of different human organs1,2. In dermatology, dermatomyositis and autoimmune bullous skin diseases have been studied most extensively3-9. However, controlled studies at a higher evidence-based level are only available for dermatomyositis. Most other data have been compiled on a limited number of patients, within case reports or the retrospective analysis of published data as recently supplied for autoimmune bullous skin diseases8. The diseases studied are both B-and Tcell mediated and induced by grossly divergent pathogenetic mechanisms. The obviously broad spectrum of IVIG functional activities is reflected by its therapeutic effects on this array of divergent diseases. Within most single-disease subsets, individual mechanisms of action of IVIG which induce clinical response are, however, mostly speculated upon. These different items are reflected by the posters presented during the Interlaken meeting which addressed both clinical and pathogenetic aspects of the diseases studied.
