Rituxan in the Treatment of Cold Agglutinin Disease

Improvement of Sjögren's syndrome after two infusions of rituximab (anti‐CD20)

“…Rituximab is a chimeric anti‐CD20 monoclonal antibody (mAb) composed of the constant region of human IgG1κ immunoglobulin and of murine variable regions. Rituximab was first developed for the treatment of B cell lymphoma (11–15) and subsequently has been applied to various diseases (16–22). Edwards et al claimed remarkable efficacy of rituximab in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in an open‐label study (23) and then confirmed this in a controlled study (24).…”

Rituximab for Immune Cytopenia in Adults: Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia, and Evans Syndrome

“…Although AIHA in children is often a self-limited process that occurs after viral infection, in adults AIHA tends to be a more chronic illness. In adults, AIHA occurring as a complication of a B-cell lymphoproliferative disorder appears to be responsive to rituximab, [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] but little is known about the effectiveness of rituximab for treating adults with idiopathic AIHA. In a case series of 7 patients with autoimmune cytopenias-4 with ITP, 2 with warm AIHA (due to warm-reactive antibodies), and 1 with cold AIHA (due to cold-reactive antibodies)-neither patient with warm AIHA responded to rituximab.…”

Remission of severe cold agglutinin disease Rituximab therapy

“…Assessing clinical outcome using a population-based data set collected over a prolonged time Correspondence: SJ Proctor; Fax: +44 (0)191 222 7632 Received 25 July 2000; accepted 22 August 2000 ondary to NHL. 4 Significant improvement has also been shown in a patient with refractory type II cryoglobulinemia after Rituximab therapy. 5 Finally, B cell depletion with Rituximab also proved to be effective in IgM-related polyneuropathies, as shown by clinical improvement and decrease in serum autoantibodies titers.…”