Methoxsalen (or Xanthotoxin, 8-methoxypsoralen) sold under the brand name Oxsoralen and Melanocyl among others, is a medication used to treat psoriasis, eczema, vitiligo, and some cutaneous lymphomas in conjunction with exposing the skin to ultraviolet (UVA) light from lamps or sunlight. Methoxsalen modifies the way skin cells receive the UVA radiation, allegedly clearing up the disease. Levels of individual patient PUVA exposure were originally determined using the Fitzpatrick scale. The scale was developed after patients demonstrated symptoms of phototoxicity after oral ingestion of methoxsa
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Methoxsalen (or Xanthotoxin, 8-methoxypsoralen) sold under the brand name Oxsoralen and Melanocyl among others, is a medication used to treat psoriasis, eczema, vitiligo, and some cutaneous lymphomas in conjunction with exposing the skin to ultraviolet (UVA) light from lamps or sunlight. Methoxsalen modifies the way skin cells receive the UVA radiation, allegedly clearing up the disease. Levels of individual patient PUVA exposure were originally determined using the Fitzpatrick scale. The scale was developed after patients demonstrated symptoms of phototoxicity after oral ingestion of methoxsalen followed by PUVA therapy. Chemically, methoxsalen is a derivative of psoralen and belongs to a class of organic natural molecules known as furanocoumarins. They consist of coumarin annulated with furan. It can also be injected and used topically.
== Natural sources == In 1947, methoxsalen was isolated (under the name "ammoidin") from the plant Ammi majus, bishop's weed.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).