Successful Treatment of Resistant Discoid Lupus Erythematous (DLE) With Low-Level Laser Therapy (LLLT): A Case Report

Abstract

Introduction: Lupus is a chronic autoimmune illness characterized by production of autoantibodies against nuclear antigens. Lupus may also only appear as a skin disease. Discoid lupus erythematous (DLE), the most common form of chronic cutaneous lupus erythematous is characterized by patches of persistent erythema, adherent scaling, follicular plugging and, in the later stages scaring and atrophy. Case Presentation: The case was a 33-year-old female with two years history of DLE, who referred to the laser clinic of Milad hospital with acute flare of skin lesions since seven months ego. She had four lesions (three with local alopecia, scaling and itching and one with atrophy). Serological studies for antinuclear antibodies and anti Ro/SS-A antibody were negative. After five sessions of treatment with infrared (830 nm; 200 mw) and red light (630 nm; 20 mw) diode laser in addition to intravenous red light laser (655 nm; 2 mw) for 20 minutes and laser acupuncture with infrared diode laser (1 J/cm2) for six acupuncture points every other day, the beneficial effects started to appear, and after nine sessions, local itching of the lesions had stopped. Through a total of 27 sessions of treatment, the lesions improved completely with highly satisfactory results; and drug-therapy held to be continued. No disease flare up was seen after the one-year follow up. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first case report on low-level laser therapy (LLLT) treatment of DLE. Low-level laser therapy may be effective in treating inflammatory lesions such as cutaneous lesions of discoid lupus erythematous. More studies with higher sample size are needed to clarify the role of low level lasers in treating such lesions.