You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Views on news
Treatment of lupus: more options after a long wait
  1. Myrto Kostopoulou1,
  2. Antonis Fanouriakis1,2,
  3. George Bertsias3,4,
  4. Dimitrios T Boumpas1,5
  1. 1 "Attikon" University Hospital of Athens, Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Attica, Greece
  2. 2 First Department of Propaedeutic Internal Medicine, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Attica, Greece
  3. 3 Rheumatology, University of Crete School of Medicine, Iraklio, Crete, Greece
  4. 4 Laboratory of Autoimmunity-Inflammation, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Heraklion, Crete, Greece
  5. 5 Laboratory of Autoimmunity and Inflammation, Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens, Athens, Attica, Greece
  1. Correspondence to Dr Dimitrios T Boumpas, "Attikon" University Hospital of Athens, Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens 12462, Attica, Greece; boumpasd{at}uoc.gr

https://doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2021-221817

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    After decades of failures and setbacks, the lupus community finally had a more fruitful period marked by the successful results in two phase III and one phase II randomised controlled trials (RCTs) testing belimumab (BLM), voclosporin (VCS) and obinutuzumab (OBI), respectively, in lupus nephritis (LN), as well as of anifrolumab (ANI) in general systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) with encouraging results in LN.1–5 These trials overcame previous drawbacks in study design, introducing new approaches in the selection of endpoints and sample size, duration of follow-up and background treatment. The new developments provide the impetus for a critical appraisal of their place in the therapeutic armamentarium of SLE. This is highly timely, since these data were published after the 2019 updates of the EULAR and EULAR-ERA/EDTA recommendations for the management of SLE and LN, respectively.6 7

    Recent trials in lupus nephritis: key findings

    Belimumab

    Based on hints from previous trials (ie, BLISS-52 and BLISS-76) for the beneficial role of add-on BLM in renal parameters, a phase III trial, BLISS-LN, tested its efficacy in LN population (table 1).1 8 At the end of follow-up, significantly more patients in the BLM group met the primary endpoint of renal response (43% vs 32%; OR, 1.6; 95% CI 1.0 to 2.3). Patients who received BLM also had a lower risk of renal-related events (a composite endpoint including end-stage kidney disease (ESKD); doubling of serum creatinine; increased proteinuria or impaired kidney function or kidney disease-related treatment failure) or death (HR, 0.51; 95% CI 0.34 to 0.77) while the safety profile was similar between groups.1 Of note, the relatively high glucocorticoid (GC) dose used in this trial raises the question whether lower GC doses would allow BLM to demonstrate its true efficacy. In this regard, in a posthoc analysis of patients who remained in the study after 24 weeks—when both mycophenolate …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Josef S Smolen

    • Twitter @none

    • Contributors All authors contributed equally, read and approved the final manuscript.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting, or dissemination plans of this research.

    • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.