It’s good to see some good news from time to time, isn’t it?
Five patients with hard-to-treat lupus entered remission after scientists tweaked their immune cells using a technique normally used to treat cancer. After the one-time therapy, all five patients with the autoimmune disease stopped their standard treatments and haven’t had a relapse.
This treatment, known as chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, needs to be tested in larger groups of lupus patients before it can be approved for widespread use. But if the results hold up in larger trials, the therapy could someday offer relief to people with moderate to severe lupus.
“For them, this is really a breakthrough,” said Dr. Georg Schett, director of rheumatology and immunology at Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. Schett is the senior author of a new report describing the small trial, which was published Thursday (Sept. 15) in the journal Nature Medicine(opens in new tab).
“It’s a single shot of CAR T cells and patients stop all treatments,” Schett told Live Science. “We were really surprised [at] how good this effect is.” [Live Science]
That’s fascinating, especially as I have gout, another autoimmune system disorder, at least according to my former rheumatologist, who told me she had determined that it’s genetic, but what if it isn’t? Would a similar treatment work for all us gout-sufferers? Actually, I’m fortunate in tolerating allopurinol just fine, and haven’t had an attack, or whatever it is it’s called, in a decade or more. But if a simple shot eliminated the need for allopurinol, I’d take it.
I see Wikipedia doesn’t mention the auto-immune part. Perhaps I confabulate.
