Vitamin K immunosuppressive effect on pediatric patients with atopic dermatitis.

BACKGROUND

Over 20 kinds of steroids, tacrolimus ointments, and cyclosporine capsules are usually recommended for the treatment of atopic dermatitis (AD), depending on the symptoms of patients. However, several side effects sometimes occur with the extensive use of these agents for the treatment of pediatric AD patients. The purpose of this study was to explore whether vitamin K could be a new immunosuppressive candidate for pediatric patients with AD.

METHODS

The immunosuppressive efficacy of vitamin K was evaluated through a cell-culture procedure using mitogen-activated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) obtained from pediatric AD patients.

RESULTS

The mean (SD) IC value of vitamin K for the proliferation of concanavalin A-activated PBMCs was 15.37 (30.05) μmol/L, while the value for tacrolimus was 0.10 (0.28) ng/mL (0.12 (0.35) nmol/L). There was a significant correlation between the IC values for vitamin K and those for tacrolimus (P = 0.0001, r = 0.8871). However, there was no significant correlation between the IC values of vitamin K and those of cyclosporine A or methylprednisolone. A significant correlation between the IC values of vitamin K or tacrolimus and blood eosinophil counts (P = 0.0099, r = 0.7086 and P = 0.0032, r = 0.7722, respectively) was observed.

CONCLUSION

Vitamin K -inhibited T-cell mitogen stimulated proliferation of PBMCs from pediatric AD patients in a dose-dependent manner. The PBMCs from pediatric AD patients were more sensitive to the immunosuppressive efficacy of vitamin K than the PBMCs from healthy subjects. The individual immunosuppressive pharmacological efficacy of vitamin K and of tacrolimus could be inferred from the blood eosinophil count of pediatric AD patients.