Clinical evaluation of adenine arabinoside and idoxuridine in the treatment of ocular herpes simplex

Abstract

A Double-blind clinical study comparing idoxuridine (IDU) with adenine arabinoside (ara-A) in treating 54 routine herpetic ulcers, and an open ara-A therapy study of 58 herpetic ulcers in patients intolerant of or resistant to IDU, was carried out over a four-year period. There was no significant difference in healing time between IDU-treated eyes (11.5 days) and ara-A-treated eyes (12.4 days) in the double-blind study but there were four moderate to marked adverse reactions to IDU and only two mild reactions to ara-A. In the open-drug study 21 patients who were intolerant of IDU because of allergy or toxicity and 37 patients who had ulcers resistant to or deteriorating on IDU therapy used ara-A up to 192 days without any adverse reaction. Mean healing time was 10.6 days for 49 of 57 patients in the efficacy analysis. Eight patients developed trophic ulcers that responded to soft lens therapy and one was dropped from the study because his initial disease could not be distinguished from severe IDU-induced keratitis.