MiscellaneousScientific Evidence of the Therapeutic Effects of Dead Sea Treatments: A Systematic Review
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
Abstracts of articles cited in MEDLINE under the query “Dead Sea” were initially retrieved (360 articles). All the abstracts were reviewed and clinical articles in which Dead Sea balneotherapy, phototherapy, or mud therapy were investigated for rheumatologic diseases (31 articles), psoriasis (50 articles), or safety assessment (25 articles) were retrieved and included. Individual case reports or opinions were excluded (42 articles). The available evidence and strength of recommendation was
Psoriasis—Dermatologic Manifestations
Dead Sea water balneotherapy and phototherapy have been used to treat dermatologic and rheumatologic involvement in psoriasis. Although several new therapeutic approaches have emerged in the last decade for psoriasis, resistant forms of the disease, cases in which only partial remission is achieved with medications and cases in which medications have unacceptable toxicity, may benefit from complementary treatments like Dead Sea water balneotherapy and phototherapy (11, 12).
In a large
Discussion
Several investigations have been published on the benefits of the Dead Sea treatments in a large host of rheumatologic diseases and psoriasis.
In psoriasis, topical therapy of skin manifestations is based on glucocorticoid preparations and calcineurin inhibitors (82). UV light and psoralens are also used to treat psoriasis (4, 83). Systemic therapies with methotrexate and retinoids combined with UV light are used for more extensive disease (84). Biologic agents like alefacept, efalizumab,
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Dr. Miriam Vered for the English proofreading.
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