Safer proteinase treatment of sciatica A biochemical preview of chymopapain inhibitors

Abstract

As pointed out in the preceding review (Nachemson and Rydevik 1988), the most serious and common complications of chymopapain treatment of patients with sciatica due to disc herniation are cerebral or subarachnoid hemorrhages and allergic manifestations. Recent progress in biochemical and physiologic studies of cysteine proteinases and their inhibitors allows some speculation on how these complications in the future might be alleviated or avoided and on how the efficiency of proteinase treatment of patients with sciatica might be increased.