Prednisolone's considerable effect

A report in JAMA's May edition of Archives of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery reveals that by treating Bell's Palsy, a form of facial paralysis that is usually temporarily, with prednisolone within 72 hours, seems to considerably reduce the number of patients with mild to moderate paralysis at 12 months. Although the cause of Bell's Palsy remains unknown, scientists believe that one of its causes could be due to the reactivation of latent herpes simplex virus, which may cause damage to the facial nerve. The majority of people naturally recover fully from the condition within 6 months without requiring treatment, yet some do experience different degrees of further episodes that have functional, psychosocial and esthetic consequences according to the study background. Thomas Berg, M.D., Ph.D., from the Oslo University Hospital Rikshospitalet in Norway and his team obtained data from a large Swedish and Finnish Scandinavian Bell's Palsy Study, which was a randomized placebo-controlled trial that included 829 patients between the age of 18 to 75 years. The team split the patients into four separate treatment groups in which patients received placebo plus placebo or prednisolone plus placebo, the antiviral valacyclovir plus placebo, or prednisolone plus valacyclovir. After 12 months, they evaluated the patients' facial function using the Sunnybrook and House-Brackmann grading systems. They write: "To conclude, treatment with prednisolone significantly reduced mild and moderate sequelae in Bell's palsy at 12 months. Prednisolone did not reduce the number of patients with severe sequelae. Valacyclovir alone did not affect the severity of sequelae. The combination of prednisolone plus valacyclovir did not reduce the number of patients with sequelae compared with prednisolone alone."