Bell’s palsy treatable with antiviral agents and corticosteroids
Patients suffering from Bell’s palsy may expect significant relief coming their way when antiviral agents are added to corticosteroids, as per a systematic review and meta-analysis of previously published studies, reported in the September 2, 2009 issue of JAMA.
Bell’s palsy is a facial paralysis with an unknown cause. The corticosteroid treatment is usually associated with a reduced risk of unsatisfactory recovery.
From News-Medical.Net:
“… high-quality evidence suggests that corticosteroids alone reduce the risk of unsatisfactory recovery by 9 percent in absolute terms, with a NNTB (number of patients needed to treat for one patient to experience benefit) of 11,” the authors report. “Corticosteroid therapy combined with antiviral agents reduced the risk of unsatisfactory recovery compared with antiviral agents alone. Corticosteroids were also associated with a 14 percent absolute risk reduction of synkinesis and autonomic dysfunction (NNTB, 7; moderate quality of evidence). Corticosteroids were not associated with an increased risk of adverse effects.”
“Our results suggest a possible incremental benefit of antiviral agents in addition to corticosteroids, with an absolute risk reduction of 5 percent compared with corticosteroids alone. This effect, however, is not definitive and did not quite reach statistical significance,” the authors write. “Further primary studies are needed to definitively establish - or refute - an incremental benefit of combined therapy compared with corticosteroid mono therapy,” the authors conclude.
John R. de Almeida, M.D., from Sunnybrook Hospital and the University of Toronto, Canada, and colleagues, conducted a search for randomized controlled trials in order to compare treatments related with corticosteroids or antiviral agents.
