• No, not by itself.
• With ongoing treatment, PV may eventually get completely better so that it doesn’t flare up when treatment is stopped. This is called being in complete remission.
• Complete remission occurs in about half of patients after 5 years of treatment ¹³. Some find it takes much longer.
• Unfortunately, some people never get complete remission. If this is the case, they will need to stay on relatively small doses of their medication to keep their PV under control.
• PV is a relapsing disease, which means that patients should expect to have flare-ups and other times when it is better. Each flare-up can be worse or better than the last one (see ‘How can pemphigus vulgaris be treated?’ and ‘Managing a pemphigus vulgaris flare-up’).
• There is no way of knowing when these flare-ups might happen or how bad they will be. However, they most commonly occur in the first two years following diagnosis and are usually milder than the original attack ¹⁴.
• Some people find that a pattern of flare-ups continues as a permanent feature of living with pemphigus vulgaris.

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