Comparative efficacy of steroid-sparing therapies for non-infectious uveitis.
Introduction
Non-infectious uveitis encompasses a group of inflammatory eye diseases that can cause irreversible vision loss if left untreated or undertreated. In cases requiring stemic treatment, a step-wise treatment approach is often employed starting with corticosteroids for severe active disease, followed by initiation of steroid-sparing therapies to maintain inflammatory control and avoid the abundant complications of long-term corticosteroid use.


Areas covered
We review the current high-quality evidence comparing the efficacy of various systemic steroid-sparing agents in the treatment of non-infectious uveitis. For studies to be included, they had to have a prospective, randomized, comparative design or a retrospective design including at least 100 patients.


Expert commentary
Given the rarity of uveitis and the heterogeneity of uveitic diseases, there are few randomized controlled studies that directly compare the relative efficacy of the various steroid-sparing immunosuppressive agents. Therefore, current treatment strategies are based mainly on data from observational series.
['Knickelbein|Jared E|JE|', 'Kim|Meredith|M|', 'Argon|Elvira|E|', 'Nussenblatt|Robert B|RB|', 'Sen|Nida H|NH|']
Non-infectious uveitis immunosuppression adalimumab azathioprine cyclosporine infliximab methotrexate mofetil mycophenolate