An auto-immune disease
Please see conventional, complementary, and alternative medical treatments for important background information regarding the different types of medical treatments discussed on this page. Naturopathic, Complementary, and Alternative treatments that may be considered include:
According to the Low Dose Naltrexone home page [LDN], LDN has been seen to benefit Pemphigoid Disorders, which are considered to be an autoimmune disease. [LDN_Autoimmune] presents a case report of Dr. Bernard Bihari treating one patient having Pemphigoid with LDN, obtaining gradual remission of symptoms over 6 weeks.
[Albers2017 🕮 ] reports a case series of 3 patients diagnosed with severe Hailey-Hailey disease who were treated with LDN. All patients "noted significant healing of erosions and plaques ... within 1 to 2 weeks of treatment, and clinical resolution of lesions within 2 months."
[Ibrahim2017 🕮 ] reports a case series of 3 patients who exhibited at least an 80% reduction in extent of Hailey-Hailey disease after treatment with low-dose naltrexone.
[Cao2018 🕮 ] reports a case series of 3 patients treated with up to 12.5mg naltrexone/day; 2 out of 3 of the patients had a good response. One patient had complete resolution of symptoms in 2 months, while a second patient had 95% resolution of symptoms after 18 months.
[Riquelme-McLoughlin2019 🕮 ] reports a case series of 14 patients, in which 2 patients had a sustained response of > 1 year, 6 patients had an initial improvement but relapsed, 4 patients discontinued the treatment because of ineffectiveness, and 2 patients discontinued the treatment because of adverse events [yes, I know this adds up to more than 14, but that is what was reported].. Starting doses varied from 1.5 to 6mg/day. Increasing the dose of naltrexone to 25 or 50mg/day did not improve results.
[McBride2020 🕮 ] [McBride2019] reports a case of a 50-year-old woman with a 20-year history of Hailey-Hailey disease, who showed significant clinical improvement after 26 days of treatment with LDN 1.5mg HS.
[Alajmi2019] reports a case of a 54-year-old man with a 30-year history of Hailey-Hailey disease, was treated with 4.5mg/day along with magnesium chloride, which yielded a dramatic improvement over the 2 weeks with excellent pain control.
[Sonthalia2019 🕮 ] reports a case of a 42-year-old male with treatment-refractory Hailey-Hailey disease who remitted with 5mg/day LDN, but relapsed on stopping the drug. Symptoms abated after restarting LDN.
The mechanism of action of LDN in treating Hailey-Hailey disease appears to be via Toll-like receptor 4 antagonism and/or opioid growth factor antagonism [Toljan2018 🕮 ].
Dr. Weyrich has been trained to use Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN). However, Dr. Weyrich has not treated any cases of Pemphigoid Disorder with LDN.
Please see What is Low Dose Naltrexone? for more information.
[McCulley2018, pg 61] reports that pemphigus is an autoimmune disorder, and proposes an approach to treating this disease, which should be supervised by a properly trained medical professional.
Dr. Weyrich has considerable interest in this topic, but has not treated any cases of pemphigus with Immune System Balancing.
Please see What is Immune System Balancing? for more information.
Neuro Research [Hinz2015] reports that chronic diseases such as pemphigus can be benefited by balancing neurotransmitter levels in the body.
Dr. Weyrich has been trained in neurotransmitter balancing protocols, but has not treated pemphigus using this technique.
Please see What is Neurotransmitter Balancing? for more information.