MS Patient Dies from Anti-Drug Antibodies - Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Information, and resources

This report is part of a 12-month Clinical Context series.

By John Gever, Senior Editor, MedPage Today

Published: February 10, 2013

Reviewed by Robert Jasmer, MD; Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner

A reaction to anti-natalizumab (Tysabri) antibodies appears to have killed a Swedish woman with multiple sclerosis who received the drug, researchers said.

Significant neurological abnormalities developed after she had received six infusions of natalizumab, and her doctors found that she had extremely high titers of antibodies against the drug, reported Anders Svenningsson, MD, PhD, of Umeå University in Sweden, and colleagues.

Seven months after starting on the drug, she was dead, the researchers wrote online inNeurology. Her physicians ruled out progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a known and frequently fatal side effect of natalizumab therapy.

Svenningsson and colleagues concluded that her death resulted from “rebound neuroinflammation as a result of the development of natalizumab anti-drug antibodies.”

Noteworthy was that the patient had shown unusual reactions to the drug starting with the fourth infusion, including chills and fever, they suggested.