Immune deficiencies, infection, and systemic immune disordersMepolizumab as a steroid-sparing treatment option in patients with Churg-Strauss syndrome
Section snippets
Methods
This open-label pilot study was approved by the Brigham and Women's Hospital Institutional Review Board. Patients were recruited nationally through the clinicaltrials.gov Web site and the investigators' clinical practices.
Results
Five female and 2 male patients enrolled and completed the study (mean age, 45 years; range, 28-62 years). All met American College of Rheumatology clinical criteria, and all had historical eosinophil counts of greater than 10%. All of the patients identified themselves as white. Two were undergoing methotrexate therapy, and one was receiving both methotrexate and hydroxychloroquine before enrollment. These 3 patients remained on stable doses of these therapies throughout the study. At
Discussion
CSS remains a challenge for clinicians because the current standard-of-care therapies, corticosteroids and immunomodulators, do not always control symptoms and are often associated with significant morbidity. New therapies are urgently needed. However, because this is a rare orphan disease, testing novel therapies is challenging because few centers have sufficient numbers of patients to undertake randomized placebo-controlled trials.
Based on this pilot trial, it appears that adjuvant therapy
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Cited by (0)
Supported by an investigator-initiated grant from GlaxoSmithKline. This study is registered at Clinicaltrials.gov as GRANT00375947.
Disclosure of potential conflict of interest: E. Oren is on the speaker's bureau for Meda Pharmaceuticals and GlaxoSmithKline. E. Israel has consultant arrangements with Abbott, Amgen, Astellas Pharma US, Cowen & Co, GlaxoSmithKline, Icagen, MedImmune, Merck, NewMentor, NKT Therapeutics, Novartis, PDL Biopharma, Pulmatrix, Schering-Plough, Sepracor, and Teva Specialty Pharmaceuticals and receives research support from Aerovance, Ception Therapeutics, Genentech, Icagen, Johnson & Johnson, MedImmune, the National Institutes of Health, and Novartis. M. E. Wechsler is a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline and MedImmune and receives research support from GlaxoSmithKline and Ception Therapeutics. The rest of the authors have declared that they have no conflict of interest.