Bullous Pemphigoid Essay

Bullous pemphigoid is a rather rare disease as it only occurs in 1 of 40,000 individuals. It may manifest in many different ways. These include urticarial lesions, pruritus with or without lesions, blisters on nodular skin, tense lesions, or fluid filled blisters (Bakker, Terra, Pas, & Jonkman, 2013). These blisters may manifest on multiple areas of the body including the eye and oral cavity, inner thighs, groin, axillae, abdomen, neck, and flexural aspects of limbs (Mutasim, 2010). The most common age that this disease state occurs is in later age, around age sixty. Patients over the age of eighty are at an increased risk for developing this disease. Other risk factors include dementia, surgical procedures and radiation (Cai, Allen, Lim, Tan, & Tang, 2015).
Other forms of diagnosis include clinical presentation, histopathologic features, direct immunofluorescence, and identification of involved antigens (Bakker et al., 2013). Diagnosis is confirmed by presence of eosinophils and sub-epidermal blisters. The most common treatment for bullous pemphigoid is potent topical corticosteroids. These are usually applied for nine months to one year and mainly target 180-kD BP (Bakker et al., 2013). When the presence of the disease is extensive, systemic corticosteroids will be the primary treatment, usually prednisone. However, if the individual is unable to be tapered off of the corticosteroid, then immunosuppressive drugs may be added (McCann & Huether, 2014). Resolution of the disease is usually seen within five years as long as treatment has proven to be effective (Mutasim,