• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of, and finding treatments for, complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia, long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Rituximab review

Ecoclimber

Senior Member
Messages
1,011
Rituximab review


Castillo-Trivino T, Braithwaite D, Bacchetti P, Waubant E. Rituximab in relapsing and progressive forms of multiple sclerosis: a systematic review. PLoS One. 2013 Jul 2;8(7):e66308

BACKGROUND:
Rituximab is an anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody approved for non Hodgkin lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis. It is being considered for the treatment of MS.

OBJECTIVES:

To evaluate the efficacy and safety of rituximab for MS treatment.

DATA COLLECTION:

Studies were selected if they were clinical trials, irrespective of the dosage or combination therapies.

MAIN RESULTS:

Four studies with a total of 599 patients were included. One assessed the efficacy of rituximab for primary progressive (PP) MS while the other three focused on relapsing-remitting (RR) MS.

In the PPMS study, rituximab delayed time to confirmed disease progression (CDP) in pre-planned sub-group analyses. The increase in T2 lesion volume was lower in the rituximab group at week 96 compared with placebo.

For the RRMS studies, an open-label phase I study found that rituximab reduced the annualized relapse rate to 0.25 from pre-therapy baseline to week 24, while in the randomized placebo-controlled phase II trial, annualized relapse rates were 0.37 in the rituximab group and 0.84 in the placebo group (p = 0.04) at week 24.

Rituximab dramatically reduced the number of gadolinium-enhancing lesions on brain MRI scans for both RRMS studies.

Off-label rituximab as an add-on therapy in patients with breakthrough disease on first-line agents was associated with an 88% reduction when comparing the mean number of gadolinium-enhancing lesions prior to and after the treatment.

Although frequent adverse events classified as mild or moderate occurred in up to 77% of the patients, there were no grade 4 infusion-related adverse events. AUTHOR’S

CONCLUSION:
Despite the frequent mild/moderate adverse events related to the drug, rituximab appears overall safe for up to 2 years of therapy and has a substantial impact on the inflammatory disease activity (clinical and/or radiological) of RRMS. The effect of rituximab on disease progression in PPMS appears to be marginal.


Anti-CD20 antibodies inhibit relapsing disease but does not appear to inhibit non-relapsing progressive MS

For Comments from the Mouse Doctors Click Below:
http://multiple-sclerosis-research.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/rituximab-review.html
Since this deals with an autoimmune disease, it is interesting comments for MS
Eco