Neurosarcoidosis Associated with Interferon Therapy

Interferon-induced cutaneous sarcoidosis in melanoma

“…Only six cases of exclusively cutaneous sarcoidosis in the treatment of other diseases have been reported to date. There also have been reports of neurosarcoidosis [7]. In relation to interferon-induced sarcoidosis in the treatment of melanoma, three cases of systemic involvement have been reported [8], with only one case of cutaneous sarcoidosis [9].…”

Fatal neurosarcoidosis induced by interferon alpha treatment in chronic hepatitis C

“…[1,2] In this communication, we report a case of severe central nervous system (CNS) sarcoidosis secondary to interferon alpha and ribavirin treatment. [3] A 47-year-old woman, a known case of chronic viral hepatitis C since 2002, had elevated serum levels of alanine and aspartate aminotransferase, 116 IU/l and 98 UI/l, respectively in 2007, and the serum hepatitis C virus (HCV)-RNA was 6.2 × 10 6 copies/ml. However, physical and abdominal ultrasound examinations were normal.…”

Interferon-induced granulomatous lung disease

“…Thus in 31 patients sarcoidosis appeared after interferon therapy. Twenty-five of thirty-three (75.8%) had evidence of multisystem sarcoidosis [10,11,13•, [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]32], whereas seven patients had only cutaneous sarcoidosis [10, 12,15,21,24,28,31], and one had only neurosarcoidosis [14]. In 25 of 33 cases (75.8%), interferon-␣ was used to treat hepatitis C (Table 1); four cases received the drug for myelogenous leukemia (CML) [25][26][27][28], and the remaining four had multiple myeloma [29], multiple sclerosis [31], and thrombocythemia [32].…”

“…Fourteen patients received interferon-␣ alone [12,13•,15-19,22,23]; 12 patients received interferon-␣ and ribavirin [10, 18,19,20,21,24]; two patients received interferon-␣, ribavirin, and amantadine [11]; and three patients were given interferon-␤ [14,29,30]. termination of treatment in six [17,18,21,23,28].…”