Contact pemphigus: a side‐effect of imiquimod therapy

Pemphigus foliaceus induced by topical imiquimod treatment

“…first described pemphigus at locations that were local and distant from a topical contact site (contact pemphigus). Some chemicals can induce pemphigus, but little is known about pemphigus induced by imiquimod . The present report describes the third known instance of PF induced by imiquimod.…”

Reversible relapse of pemphigus foliaceus triggered by topical imiquimod suggests that Toll-like receptor 7 inhibitors may be useful treatments for pemphigus

“…Very little has been written about pemphigus induced by topical treatment, and even less literature exists about drug‐induced flares of pemphigus. There are three cases of imiquimod‐induced pemphigus in the English literature, 2–4 but each were short‐lived and resolved once imiquimod was ceased. To our knowledge, this is the first case of pre‐existing pemphigus flaring due to imiquimod treatment.…”

“…In the three published cases of imiquimod‐induced pemphigus, three different subtypes of pemphigus were seen: PF, 2 pemphigus vegetans 3 and pemphigus vulgaris 4 . All were the first presentation of pemphigus, with complications localized to the area of application in a timeframe of 2–8 weeks.…”

Acute Renal Failure Caused by Imiquimod 5% Cream in a Renal Transplant Patient: Review of the Literature on Side Effects of Imiquimod

“…The most common of those weird systemic side effects are influenza-like symptoms and headache. A review of the literature revealed lots of unusual adverse reactions related to the topical use of this drug, which are summarized in table 1[10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57]. …”