-
- Lydia Koulova, Doru Alexandrescu, Janice P Dutcher, Kevin P O'Boyle, Saji Eapen, and Peter H Wiernik.
- Comprehensive Cancer Center at Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center, New York Medical College, Bronx, New York 10466, USA. IKoulov@aol.com
- Am. J. Hematol. 2005 Jan 1; 78 (1): 49-54.
AbstractThree patients (one with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura [ITP] and two with thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura [TTP]) were treated with rituximab (anti-CD20 chimeric antibody) at a dose of 325 mg/m2 administered weekly after they failed standard therapies. The patient with ITP who did not respond to steroids and anti-D antibody administration achieved augmentation of her platelet counts up to 180 x 10(3)/microL after four doses of rituximab. Six months later, when her counts started to decrease, she received maintenance therapy with an additional course of 4 standard doses of antibody that resulted in consolidation of her platelet counts around 100 x 10(3)/microL. One patient with TTP and concurrent idiopathic nephropathy who was previously treated with plasmapheresis, steroids, and vincristine improved only after 4 weekly administrations of the antibody. Moreover, his nephrotic-range proteinuria resolved after he received rituximab. The other patient with chronic TTP who still relapsed after splenectomy received 5 doses of rituximab with concomitant plasmapheresis. His thrombocytopenia improved slowly, and his platelet count stabilized at 300 x 10(3)/microL. All three patients showed evidence of response to anti-CD20 antibody with improvement in clinical outcome as well as augmentation of platelet counts to normal levels. We conclude that rituximab is a useful immunomodulating adjunct in the treatment of refractory ITP and TTP.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
- Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as
*italics*
,_underline_
or**bold**
. - Superscript can be denoted by
<sup>text</sup>
and subscript<sub>text</sub>
. - Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines
1. 2. 3.
, hyphens-
or asterisks*
. - Links can be included with:
[my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
- Images can be included with:
![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
- For footnotes use
[^1](This is a footnote.)
inline. - Or use an inline reference
[^1]
to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document[^1]: This is a long footnote.
.