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by Joyce Frieden News Editor, MedPage Today
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — A combination of high-dose immunosuppressive therapy and autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation resulted in a high remission rate in patients with severe relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS), researchers reported here.
“High dose immunosuppressive therapy was well tolerated; we had few serious complications,” researcher James Bowen, MD, of Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, said here at at the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers annual meeting. “The high-dose therapy was effective at inducing sustained remissions over the 5 years,” and patients did not need to go on any other disease-modifying therapy.
The researchers conducted a phase II prospective, single-arm, open-label trial of the combination in patients with highly active relapsing-remitting MS who had failed conventional therapies. The high-dose immunosuppressive therapy included carmustine, etoposide, cytarabine (ara-C), melphalan, and antithymocyte globulin.
Eligibility requirements for the trial included an Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score of 3.0 to 5.5 and more than two relapses on therapy in the previous 18 months. Primary endpoint events or treatment failure were defined as either death or any evidence of MS disease activity, including relapse, new lesions seen on MRI, or a disability increase of more than 0.5 EDSS points during the 5 years after transplant.
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