Pemphigus Vulgaris: Failure of Treatment With Riboflavin and Smallpox Vaccine

An encouraging report of the treatment of pemphigus vulgaris was recently made by Topping and Knoefel.¹They administered to their patient orally a flavin concentrate containing 970 Sherman-Bourquin units, or approximately 2.5 mg. of riboflavin daily. This patient had previously been treated by them with neoarsphenamine and sulfanilamide without success. After the administration of riboflavin had been started, however, the lesions cleared up and the patient remained well for several weeks. Later, after treatment was discontinued, the patient suffered a recurrence.²When the drug was resumed, this time in the dose of 5 mg. daily, the lesions cleared up again, and the patient has been apparently well since, nearly fourteen months after the institution of riboflavin therapy.² On the strength of this favorable report, and since pemphigus is still considered a fatal disease, a patient in the New York Hospital suffering from pemphigus was treated for eleven