Background: Narrowband - ultraviolet B (NB-UVB) is an emerging, effective, and safe therapy for vitiligo, but the treatment course often requires a long duration of time which may carry a potential risk for various side effects and patients' noncompliance.
Objective: To explore the effect of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection on the outcome of short-term NB-UVB therapy for the patients with stable vitiligo.
Patients and methods: The study included 60 stable vitiligo patients with overall symmetrical lesions. For each patient, the left side of the body was treated with NB-UVB alone (control side) while the right side was treated with NB-UVB therapy in addition to intradermal injection of PRP, every 2 weeks for 4 months.
Results: There was statistically highly significant improvement in the repigmentation in the combination group(PRP plus NB-UVB) compared with NB-UVB group.
Conclusion: Intradermal PRP injection in combination with NB-UVB could be considered as a simple, safe, tolerable, and cheap technique for treatment of vitiligo. It shortens the duration of NB-UVB therapy and is expected to increase patient compliance. Longer follow-up is needed.
Keywords: narrow-band UVB; platelet-rich plasma; vitiligo.
© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.