Novel treatment found for disfiguring cutaneous sarcoidosis

A new study has reported successful treatment of a patient with disfiguring sarcoidosis with a drug approved for rheumatoid arthritis.

For several months, a 48 year old, female patient, was treated with arthritis medication tofacitinib, a Jak inhibitor, which blocks a pathway known as Jak-STAT, twice daily. The patient with cutaneous sarcoidosis had not previously had a response to medications and had not received systemic gluco-corticoids. The researchers observes that her skin lesions nearly disappeared. This treatment resulted in clinical and histologic remission of her skin disease. They also performed RNA sequencing on biopsied skin from the patient before and during treatment.

The researcher has pioneered the use of Jak inhibitors to treat other intractable skin diseases, including vitiligo, alopecia areata and eczema.

A frequently awful disease, which to date has no reliably effective therapy, may now be targeted with Jak inhibitors. We've a relatively safe medicine that works. Before treatment, we're able to show that the Jak-STAT pathway is activated, he said.

During treatment, not only does her skin disease go away, but there is no activation of the pathway, he added.

We plan to evaluate the activation of the Jak-STAT pathway in the lung fluid and blood of over 200 patients with pulmonary and multi-organ sarcoidosis, said co-author. These big steps toward understanding a disease that has been a mystery for years, the researchers said. Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease that affects multiple organs in the body. While some sarcoidosis patients recover without treatment, others suffer damage to the lungs, heart, lymph nodes,skin and other organs.  Current treatments, including steroids, are not reliably effective for the skin and can cause serious side effects.

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Read more at Speciality Medical Dialogues: Novel treatment found for disfiguring cutaneous sarcoidosis https://speciality.medicaldialogues.in/novel-treatment-found-for-disfiguring-cutaneous-sarcoidosis/

New Drug Offers Hope for Bone Marrow Cancer Patients

A therapeutic drug has been found to improve outcomes and survival rates for patients with a serious type of bone marrow cancer.

In a clinical trial by researchers, patients with newly diagnosed myeloma were treated with a drug called lenalidomide.

The results showed an improvement for those who received lenalidomide drug, compared to those not receiving it.

This is a major breakthrough as it shows that the long-term use of lenalidomide significantly improves the time myeloma patients stay in remission after initial therapy. 

Myeloma is a cancer of the plasma cells and it can affect several areas of the body, such as the spine, skull, pelvis and ribs. Current treatment usually involves chemotherapy and a stem-cell transplant.

It is a huge step and, importantly, identifies that for younger patients lenalidomide improves their overall survival for this difficult-to-treat bone marrow cancer. Our research highlights that lenalidomide should be considered for newly diagnosed patients following stem-cell transplantation. 

As part of the study, a total of 1,137 newly diagnosed patients were randomly assigned to lenalidomide maintenance therapy and 834 patients to observation - this was after they completed their initial treatment.

The results show that lenalidomide can prolong the average remission time by more than two years in younger patients and by well over a year in older, less fit patients.

It reduced the risk of progression or death by more than 50 per cent in both groups.

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