ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Twenty-four-week follow-up examination of a leukocytapheresis therapy in rheumatoid arthritis

Authors

Yasumori Izumi¹, Masahiro Tominaga², Nozomi Iwanaga¹, Mingguo Huang¹, Fumiko Tanaka¹, Kouichiro Aratake¹, Kazuhiko Arima¹, Mami Tamai¹, Makoto Kamachi¹, Hideki Nakamura¹, Hiroaki Ida¹, Tomoki Origuchi³, Atsushi Kawakami¹ and Katsumi Eguchi¹

Received:

06 September 2005

Accepted:

30 November 2005

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Abstract

Several clinical trials have demonstrated that leukocytapheresis (LCAP) is a safe and effective therapy for patients with refractory rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, most of those reports were limited to short-term clinical observation. We have treated 11 RA patients with LCAP and observed them for 24 weeks after the final administration. The 11 cases included 3 diabetes patients, 2 patients with interstitial pneumonia, 1 patient with diffuse panbronchiolitis, and 1 patient with old pulmonary tuberculosis. Alternative therapies for all of these patients were considered difficult. Once-a-week LCAP administration was added for 5 weeks to the previous therapeutic regime in all patients, and the treatment efficacy was prospectively qualified. At 4 weeks after the final LCAP therapy, 8 of the 11 patients (73%) had achieved an American College of Rheumatology (ACR) 20% response, and 3 of the 11 (27%) had achieved both ACR 50% and ACR 70% responses. Although the efficacy decreased after the observation periods, an ACR 20% response was maintained in 5 patients (45%) at 24 weeks. Although only a limited number of patients were examined in this study, the results suggested that LCAP therapy will be beneficial to RA patients, including patients who cannot be treated with tumor necrosis factor inhibitors or conventional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs.

Key words

DAS28-CRP - Leukocytapheresis (LCAP) - Rheumatoid arthritis (RA)

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