Newer therapeutic approaches for systemic lupus erythematosus: immunosuppressive agents

Non-Invasive Imaging for Evaluating Cardiovascular Involvement in Patients with Primary and Lupus Nephritis

Background:

Evidence suggests that proteinuric diseases, such as primary or secondary glomerulonephritis, increase cardiovascular risk, but few studies confirmed this association.

Methods:

This is a cross-sectional, observational study on 32 patients, 17 with Primary Glomerulonephritis (PG) and 15 with Lupus Glomerulonephritis (LG). The control group consisted of 32 healthy individuals. Intima-media thickness (IMT) of the left common carotid artery, carotid bifurcation and internal carotid artery was measured by ultrasound. Left ventricular myocardial deformation was assessed by the use of the Global Circumferential Strain (GCS) and the Global Longitudinal Strain (GLS) following 2-Dimensional (2D) echocardiography in all participants.

Results:

Patients with glomerulonephritis in both groups showed significantly lower GLS compared with controls (p=0.0005). There was also a significant difference in common carotid IMT values between the LG and GP group (0.45±0.09 vs. 0.58±0.17 mm, respectively; p=0.01), but there was no difference with the control group. In patient group (n=32), a significantly positive correlation was observed between C-reactive protein and proteinuria (r=0.98; p<0.0001), whereas negative correlations were found between common carotid IMT and creatinine clearance (r=-0.97; p<0.0001) and between carotid bifurcation IMT and phosphate levels (r=-0.97; p<0.0001)

Conclusion:

Subclinical systolic myocardial dysfunction is present early in the course of glomerular disease. The use of 2D GLS revealed that LG and PG patients with no cardiovascular symptoms or history and a preserved left ventricle ejection fraction on conventional echocardiography had subclinical reduction in LV global longitudinal systolic function compared with controls.

Development of a squamous cell carcinoma mouse model for immunotoxicity testing

An important component of safety assessment of new pharmaceuticals is evaluation of their potential to increase the risk of developing cancer in humans. The traditional 2-year rodent bioassay often is not feasible or scientifically applicable for evaluation of biotherapeutics. Additionally, it has poor predictive value for non-genotoxic immunosuppressive compounds. Thus, there is a need for alternative testing strategies. A novel 3-stage tumor model in syngeneic C3H/HeN mice was evaluated here to study the effects of immunosuppressive drugs on tumor promotion and progression in vivo. The model employed a skin squamous cell carcinoma cell line (SCC VII) due to the increased prevalence of squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) in humans associated with immunosuppression after transplants. Local invasion, colonization and tumor progression were evaluated. The validation set of immunosuppressive drugs included: Cyclosporin (CSA), cyclophosphamide (CTX), azathioprine, etanercept, abatacept and prednisone. Local invasion was evaluated by histological assessment as well as fluorescence trafficking from Qdot(®)-labeled tumor cells from the site of inoculation to the draining lymph node. Colonization was evaluated by lung colony counts following intravenous inoculation. Tumor progression was assessed by morphometric analysis of lesion area, angiogenesis and growth fraction of established metastatic neoplasia. Immunosuppressive drugs in the validation set yielded mixed results, including decreased progression. The methods and results described herein using an in vivo syngeneic mouse tumor model can provide insight about the assessment of immunosuppressive drugs in carcinogenicity risk assessment.

Calcineurin inhibitors may be a reasonable alternative to cyclophosphamide in the induction treatment of active lupus nephritis: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Although the accepted standard of care during the induction treatment of active lupus nephritis (LN) has been cyclophosphamide (CYC), recent trials suggest that calcineurin inhibitors (CNIs), which include cyclosporine A (CsA) and tacrolimus (TAC), may be just as, or even more, effective and less toxic than CYC. A systematic review and meta-analysis were performed to evaluate the clinical effects of CNIs on active LN compared with those of CYC. In the present study, clinical trials that compared CNIs with CYC in the induction therapy of active LN were searched in the Cochrane Library, Ovid and PubMed databases. The clinical data on renal remission and side-effects were collected and analyzed. The relative risk (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. As a result, six controlled trials involving 265 patients were included in the meta-analysis, four of which compared TAC (treatment group) with CYC (control group), and the other two compared CsA (treatment group) with CYC (control group). CNIs were superior to CYC for higher complete remission (RR=1.56, 95% CI 1.14-2.15, Z=2.74, P=0.006) and better overall response/total remission (RR=1.23, 95% CI 1.07-1.42, Z=2.87, P=0.004) and had fewer side-effects. Among the CNIs, TAC demonstrated more favorable results than CsA. Therefore, it was concluded that CNIs may be a reasonable alternative to CYC in the induction treatment of active LN. However, large-scale, multicenter, well-designed clinical trials should be adopted to further confirm this conclusion.

Extensive hypertrophic lupus erythematosus: atypical presentation

Lupus erythematosus (LE) is a disease with a wide spectrum of cutaneous and systemic manifestations. Clinical features of patients with LE show a great variation, and for this reason it is difficult to develop a unifying concept of this disease. Our objective is to present a case of hypertrophic LE with atypical morphology and extensive involvement, who responded favorably to isotretinoin. Diagnosis of hypertrophic lupus erythematosus (HLE) was confirmed by characteristic histopathological findings. Combination therapy with isotretinoin and hydroxychloroquine resulted in flattening and repression of previously refractory skin lesions. Sometimes, HLE lesions may present a diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma. In long standing lesions, squamous cell carcinoma may arise. Therefore, HLE requires adequate therapy with clinical and histopathological follow up.

Critical Review of Preclinical Approaches to Evaluate the Potential of Immunosuppressive Drugs to Influence Human Neoplasia

Many immunosuppressive drugs are associated with an increased risk of B-cell lymphoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and Kaposi sarcoma. Thirteen immunosuppressive drugs have been tested in 2-year carcinogenicity studies (abatacept; azathioprine; busulfan; cyclophosphamide; cyclosporine; dexamethasone; everolimus; leflunomide; methotrexate; mycophenolate mofetil; prednisone; sirolimus; and tacrolimus) and in additional models including neonatal and genetically modified mice; chemical, viral, ultraviolet, and ionizing radiation co-carcinogenesis, and in models with transplanted tumor cells. The purpose of this review is to outline the mechanisms by which immunosuppressive drugs can influence neoplasia, to summarize the available preclinical data on the 13 drugs, and to critically review the performance of the models. A combination of primary tumor and metastasis assays conducted with transplanted cells may provide the highest value for hazard identification and can be applied on a case-by-case basis. However, for both small molecules and therapeutic proteins, determining the relative risk to patients from preclinical data remains problematic. Classifying immunosuppressive drugs based on their mechanism of action and hazard identification from preclinical studies and a prospective pharmacovigilance program to monitor carcinogenic risk may be a feasible way to manage patient safety during the clinical development program and postmarketing.

Connective tissue diseases: What does the death of Riquent hold for the future of SLE?

In clinical trials testing new treatments for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), the failure of the 15-year drug development program for riquent (abetimus sodium) is the latest in a string of disappointments for a disease that has seen no new drugs approved in over 50 years.

Mycophenolate mofetil is as efficacious as, but safer than, cyclophosphamide in the treatment of proliferative lupus nephritis: a meta-analysis and meta-regression

OBJECTIVE

Since mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) has emerged as an immunosuppressant for treating proliferative lupus nephritis, the role of cyclophosphamide (CYC)-containing regimens is being challenged. Efficacy data from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and previous meta-analyses comparing these two agents for treating lupus nephritis have been inconsistent as they were heterogeneous in design and of small sample size. An updated meta-analysis is therefore required.

METHODS

Publications in the English literature were searched with the keywords 'mycophenoate', 'mycophenolic', 'lupus nephritis', 'nephritis' and 'glomerulonephritis' for RCTs in electronic databases. Primary outcome was relative risk (RR) of renal remission at 6 months. Secondary outcome included RRs of mortality, development of end-stage renal failure (ESRF) and side effects. Meta-regression was performed to identify factors explaining the heterogeneity of the effect sizes.

RESULTS

Ten eligible RCTs involving 847 patients were included. MMF offers similar efficacy in inducing renal remission as CYC (RR 1.052; 95% CI 0.950, 1.166) and the risks of death (RR 0.709; 95% CI 0.373, 1.347) and ESRF (RR 0.453; 95% CI 0.183, 1.121) were comparable. Significantly fewer patients receiving MMF developed amenorrhoea (RR 0.212; 95% CI 0.094, 0.479) and leucopenia (RR 0.473; 95% CI 0.269, 0.832) while the risks of herpes infection and pneumonia tended to be lower and that of diarrhoea appeared higher in the MMF groups. Meta-regression revealed that the non-white and non-Asian ethnicities contributed significantly to the heterogeneity of the effect sizes of renal remission.

CONCLUSION

MMF offers similar efficacy in renal remission and survival as CYC. MMF appears safer than CYC in the treatment of proliferative lupus nephritis.

LJP-394 (abetimus sodium) in the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus

Renal disease is one of the most severe aspects of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), potentially leading to irreversible kidney failure. The standard of care for severe lupus nephritis involves the use of high-dose corticosteroids, cyclophosphamide and other immunosuppressive drugs. Although these drugs are effective in controlling disease activity in the majority of patients, up to 25% of patients treated with cyclophosphamide-based protocols develop renal insufficiency and end-stage renal disease, and treatment discontinuation is associated with the occurrence of flares. Furthermore, these therapies are associated with a high incidence of short- and long-term side effects. LJP-394 (abetimus sodium) is an investigational agent specifically designed to decrease anti-dsDNA antibody levels, and it is under development for the prevention of nephritic flares in patients with SLE since the early 1990s. The drug has been evaluated in 13 clinical trials that evaluated > 800 patients with SLE, over a 10-year time span. It is likely that LJP-394 might have a role in the prevention of renal flares in SLE patients, and if the initial data is confirmed in an ongoing trial, this drug could represent either a substitute for immunosuppressive drugs or could allow a reduction of their dose, thereby reducing the risks of short- and long-term side effects. This paper reviews the principal aspects of chemistry, pharmacokinetics, efficacy and safety of LJP-394, and analyses studies on animal models and clinical studies conducted in the last few years.

Elderly-Onset Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Systemic lupus erythematosus is an autoimmune multi-system disease of uncertain aetiology with highly variable clinical manifestations. Women of child-bearing age are most often affected; however, approximately 10-20% of cases occur in older patients. Elderly-onset lupus has been defined in various studies as onset of lupus after age 50-65 years. Menopause and changes in cellular immunity with aging may contribute to development of lupus in older adults. Many studies suggest that the clinical and serological features of elderly-onset lupus differ from those of lupus in younger patients. Arthritis, fever, serositis, sicca symptoms, Raynaud's syndrome, lung disease and neuropsychiatric symptoms are more common in patients with elderly-onset lupus, while malar rash, discoid lupus and glomerulonephritis are less common in elderly-onset patients compared with younger lupus patients. Most elderly-onset lupus patients have a positive anti-nuclear antibody test, but the prevalence of anti-double-stranded DNA and hypocomplementaemia is lower in elderly-onset patients than in younger patients. Rheumatoid factor, anti-Ro/Sjögren's syndrome (SS) A and anti-La/SSB are more often positive in elderly-onset patients. The diagnosis of elderly-onset lupus may be delayed for many months: insidious onset, low prevalence and similarity to other more common disorders make the diagnosis of lupus challenging in this population. Treatment of lupus in the elderly may be complicated by co-morbidities and increased risk of toxicities from usual treatments. Optimal management of elderly-onset lupus is empiric because of a lack of randomised controlled studies. However, the approach to treatment is similar regardless of the age of the patient. This article discusses the prevalence, clinical course, serological features, prognosis and treatment of elderly-onset systemic lupus erythematosus.

Update on Connective Tissue Diseases in Dermatology

Recent advances in understanding the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases, including lupus erythematosus, dermatomyositis, and scleroderma, have allowed for reorganization of the classification of these disorders. With these novel stratifications, early identification of rheumatic skin diseases with systemic implications and consistency in designing and executing therapeutic trials will be enhanced. This review will provide a compilation of updates on epidemiology, pathology, evaluation, and classification with a predominant focus on therapeutics, reflecting the growth is this area.