Antibody Cuts MRI Lesions in MS

Stuart SchlossmanMS Drug Therapies, MS Research Study and Reports, Multiple Sclerosis

By Nancy Walsh, Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Published: November 23, 2011
Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and
Dorothy Caputo, MA, RN, BC-ADM, CDE, Nurse Planner
Treatment with the monoclonal antibody daclizumab (Zenapax) resulted in significant decreases in contrast-enhancing lesions on MRI in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), a small, open-label study found.

After 54 weeks of treatment, the number of new contrast-enhancing lesions decreased from a pretreatment median of 2.042 to 0.250, which represented an 87.6% reduction (P<0.001), according to Bibiana Bielekova, MD, of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Md., and colleagues.

The total volume of these lesions also fell, from 0.328 mm2 to 0.034 mm2, which was an inhibition of 89.7% (P<0.001), the researchers reported in the November 22 issue of Neurology.


These decreases persisted throughout therapy, they noted.

Bielekova and colleagues previously demonstrated that MS patients who continued to have disease activity despite treatment with interferon-β showed improvements when daclizumab, which targets the α-chain of the interleukin-2 receptor CD25, was added to the regimen.

They also found that patient response was accompanied by an increase in the number of CD56bright natural killer (NK) cells, which are immunoregulatory cells that can eliminate pathogenic activated T-cells.

The potential benefits of daclizumab as add-on therapy with interferon-β in multiple sclerosis also were demonstrated in a phase II multicenter clinical trial known as CHOICE.

To see if daclizumab could be used as monotherapy in multiple sclerosis and to explore the effects of the treatment on CD56bright NK cells and other inflammatory and immune markers, Bielekova’s group enrolled 16 patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.
Participants received intravenous daclizumab in doses of 1 mg/kg at baseline and two weeks later, and then every month for one year.















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