Lupus is
a disease where the immune system turns on the body's organs and tissues,
continually damaging them. It affects 40 to 50 people per 100,000, most commonly
women aged around 30 and African-Americans.
With positive results from high dose
treatments of the anti-cancer drug cyclophosphamide, researchers have brought new hope
to patients suffering from moderate to severe forms of Lupus.
Michelle Petri, M.D., professor of
rheumatology at Johns Hopkins, says, "Living with long-term severe Lupus is devastating
as the body's immune system attacks itself." Dr. Petri and colleagues believe changing
the immune system by "reprogramming it" could be beneficial in the treatment of the
chronic, and sometimes deadly, disease.
In a
study
conducted by Dr. Petri at Johns Hopkins' Lupus Center and Kimmel Cancer Center,
14 Lupus patients, who had not responded to standard Lupus treatments and had
considerable organ failure, received high-dose cyclophosphamide intravenously for four
days. Dr. Petri
says, "The idea here is to essentially wipe out the immune system and
allow the body to reprogram itself to function normally."
After two and a half years, Dr. Petri
and colleagues found five participants had positive immune responses from the treatment
and three of those participants remained disease-free. Another six participants showed
partial response and continue treatment with immune-suppressing drugs.
A larger, randomized trial of high-dose
cyclophosphamide without stem cell transplantation versus standard therapy for
organ-threatening active Lupus is under way at the Johns Hopkins Lupus Center.
For
more information, contact the Lupus Center at 410-614-1573 or
stdman@jhmi.edu.
