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Excessive amounts of glycosaminoglycans accumulate in the extraocular muscles of patients with Graves' ophthalmopathy and in the affected skin of patients with pretibial myxoedema. It is widely accepted that fibroblasts are the sources of glycosaminoglycan synthesis. Pentoxifylline, an analogue of the methylxanthine theobromine, inhibits the proliferation and certain biosynthetic activities of fibroblasts derived from normal human skin and from skin of patients with some fibrotic disorders. Our objective was to determine whether pentoxifylline has similar effects on fibroblasts derived from patients with Graves' ophthalmopathy and pretibial myxoedema and could serve as a candidate for the treatment of these manifestations. Fibroblasts from the extraocular muscles of two patients with Graves' ophthalmopathy and normal extraocular muscles of two subjects with strabismus, as well as the affected skin of two patients with pretibial myxoedema were cultured in vitro in the presence and absence of pentoxifylline to assay its effect on the proliferation of fibroblasts and their production of glycosaminoglycans. In subconfluent fibroblast cultures, pentoxifylline treatment caused a dose-dependent inhibition of serum-driven fibroblast proliferation. In confluent fibroblast cultures both in the presence and absence of serum, exposure to pentoxifylline similarly resulted in a dose-dependent inhibition of glycosaminoglycan synthesis for all these different kinds of fibroblasts. These findings may form the rationale for a clinical trial using pentoxifylline for the treatment of Graves' ophthalmopathy and pretibial myxoedema.

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