Systemic interventions for recurrent aphthous stomatitis (mouth ulcers)

No single treatment was found to be effective and therefore the results remain inconclusive in regard to the best systemic intervention for RAS. This is likely to reflect the poor methodological rigour of trials, and lack of studies for certain drugs, rather than the true effect of the intervention. It is also recognised that in clinical practice, individual drugs appear to work for individual patients and so the interventions are likely to be complex in nature. In addition, it is acknowledged that systemic interventions are often reserved for those patients who have been unresponsive to topical treatments, and therefore may represent a select group of patients.