In the July 2010 issue of Consumer Reports there is a short (less than one page) “5-Minute Consult” article from the magazine’s chief medical advisor Marvin Lipman, MD entitled “Treating Toenail Fungus”. Overall, I think it is a well written and accurate piece that gives consumers some valuable information.  I do, however, find a few points on which Dr. Lipman and I would not totally agree.

1.  The article starts out by talking about all of the attention and “millions of dollars” spent each year for drug company marketing of onychomycosis in a “futile” attempt to treat the condition.  Apparently, Dr. Lipman has not been watching for direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads on TV, looking for journal advertisement about onycho products or seeing Pharma reps in his office.  If he did, he would know that there is not, nor has there been for about 2-3 years, ANY money spent on onychomycosis product advertisements at all!  All 3 FDA approved products are currently generic and no money is spent on marketing them.  I would also take exception to his classification of the treatment as “futile”.  Both clinical trials, and clinical experience showed terbinafine and itraconazole to be rather effective agents.  Even if they do not work all of the time, their use is far from futile. 

2.  Dr. Lipman states that the treatment is “only occasionally medically necessary” except to prevent secondary bacterial infection particularly in diabetic patients and the immunocompromised. Despite many studies showing quality of life issues and other medical complications of onycho, the entire “cosmetic vs. medically necessary” argument has been going on for years, mainly perpetuated by the insurance companies who used it as an excuse to not pay for the drug.   It is interesting that, now that the drugs are generic and inexpensive, suddenly there seems to be little trouble getting them covered.  I guess the generic forms are medically necessary while the name brands were not. 

3.  His comments on the “do it yourself” Internet market for onychomycosis products is right on target.  Although some are capable of killing fungus few if any have been subject to randomized controlled trials.  This also goes for most of those products being sold by our colleagues out of their offices. (Anecdotal testimony perpetuated by representative, i.e. “According to Drs. Smith and Jones, it works 90% of the time” does NOT equal medical evidence!)

4. Dr. Lipman’s discussion on prescription options is also mostly correct.  I would challenge his comment that a “3-month course of treatment can run up to several hundreds of dollars not including doctor’s visits and cost of tests”.  Now that these drugs are generic we are all familiar with the $4 Rx of terbinafine that many of our patients are now able to receive from discount pharmacies.  In fact, oral therapy of onychomycosis is actually quite inexpensive. The downside to his is that it has stymied any new oral therapy development since few Pharma companies want to develop a new, expensive drug to challenge such inexpensive therapy.

5. My final comment is in regard to his comment that a single laser treatment, “usually by a podiatrist, may be effective nearly 90% of the time but at around $1200 a pop”.  I find it quite interesting that Dr. Lipman is critical of prescription orals and topical and all of the anecdotal remedies holding them up to scrutiny for their lack of clinical evidence yet he mentions a 90% success rate with lasers. I need to point out that NONE of the lasers have been proven to work anywhere near the 90% mark with a single treatment and only one, the Noveon system, has any published data whatsoever.  (For full disclosure, I have been a consultant to both Nomir and Patholase).  The Noveon data just published last week by Adam Landsman, DPM, PhD and colleagues in the May/June issue of the Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association used 4 treatments and evaluated at 180 days.  They found that 85% of the nails were improved as judged by an independent, blinded expert panel. Patholase has just completed their prospective study on the PinPointe system but it has not yet been published.

Do yourselves a favor and find the piece since you know that your patients are going to be questioning you about it!   

Ulceration under a mycotic nail in a patient with diabetes

I will be in Columbus, OH for the Region IV (Ohio) meeting to lecture on June 3, 2010.  I have been given the “Learning Lunch” spot from 12:00 to 1:30 and plan on covering a broad range of lower extremity infectious diseases topics including MRSA, antibiotic therapy for osteomyelitis and diabetic foot infections.

Prior to my session, I will be in the Exhibit Hall from 9:30 – 11:30 at the Data Trace Booth to sign copies of the Handbook, talk about this blog and just answer questions anyone might have about treating infections.

I hope to see folks there!

One of our readers recently sent the blog the following comment:

“Anything new to add to comments in book about laser treatment of fungal nails?  In my area there are ads for DPMs offering this $1000 per treatment!  My question is; does it work?”

Up to this point I have been tacitly avoiding this topic waiting for all of the chips to fall into place.  I guess it is time to, at least give my initial thoughts.  I will start by disclosing that I was a member of the original Patholase/PinPointe Advisory Board although I am currently not working with that company and I am a current Advisory Board member for Nomir. Being under a non-disclosure agreement with both I must therefore be very careful to only give background information that is in the public domain and give only MY OPINION based on the information in the public domain so as not to let slip any confidential information that I may have picked up along the way.  This is another reason I have not written about this topic.     

Although there may be more than two commercial products to mention, I will limit my discussion to the two best known, the PinPointe Laser from Patholase and the Noveon Laser from Nomir.  These are totally different devices that use different forms of laser energy. As I write this NEITHER is FDA approved specifically for the treatment of onychomycosis although both have a device clearance for general podiatric and dermatologic use.  Interestingly, if you actually look for the specifics of that general definition, onychomycosis is not included.

To this point each company has taken very different marketing approaches.  PinPointe, despite not having the FDA approval, has been aggressively marketing the device to podiatrists based on their general usage clearance.  Up to this point, their publically available data supporting the use of the device for onychomycosis has been limited to a small number of patients originally treated pre-marketing and by early adapters of the device.  This data is not from a prospective, IRB approved, randomized controlled trial. To their credit, a quick search on www.clinicaltrials.gov under the term “onychomycosis” does reveal that they are currently engaged in such a clinical trial.  They also continue to collect retrospective data from current users.  To the best of my knowledge they have published no studies based on their clinical data or their technology. 

Nomir has taken the path of performing an initial three IRB approved, prospective clinical trials and has submitted their pivotal trial to the FDA in an attempt to receive an onychomycosis indication.  Their technology, using a dual wavelength (870 & 930 nm) near infrared (IR) laser light to cause photoinactivation of  both fungus and bacteria, including T. rubrum and MRSA, at physiologic temperatures, has been shown to be successful in vitro and in vivo, and was recently published by its developer Dr. Eric Bornstein http://www.nomirmedical.com/products/publications.htm in the Nov/Dec 2009 issue of Photochemistry and Photobiology.  They have also submitted the preliminary results of their pivotal clinical data for the treatment of onychomycosis which has been accepted for publication in a peer reviewed, indexed journal.  Although they have signed up podiatrists to be trained on the device, it has not yet been made commercially available. 

Enough background…to answer the question that initiated this discourse, I guess I would have to say that, yes, given the data I have seen, these two laser therapies do, in fact, show positive results in the treatment of onychomycosis.  Will they work in every patient with nail fungus?  Of course not!  Even oral terbinafine only had a 38% total cure rate in its clinical trials.  Which brings up another question…do they work even as well as the oral agents?  Frankly, no one can say at this point without seeing the results of the same type of well designed, controlled trials that those drugs went through.  I will say this much for certain, there is no risk of systemic toxicity with the lasers as there is with the oral drugs, no matter how rare.  Is the treatment worth $1000?  That is something that only an individual patient can answer.  I hear through the proverbial grapevine that there has been no shortage of folks willing to pay that or similar amounts for the treatment.  Heck, there are scores of physicians specializing in cosmetic treatments, some without rigidly controlled and studied FDA approved data, that have done quite well promoting their services.

Until more information is available on which definitive statements can be made, I would have to advise each of my readers to use their own moral and ethical compass in determining what is appropriate for their patients and their practice.   I would really appreciate any comments you may have if you are currently using a laser on either your own patient experience or if you have seen patients treated by other docs and their satisfaction level.