Hoffmann, R. A wiki for the life sciences where authorship matters. Nature Genetics (2008)

Editor

Personal info

View

About

Terms

Javascript disabled

Please enable Javascript support in your browser to use this application.

Instructions on how to enable JavaScript on different browsers can be found here: http://www.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=23852.

[edit this page]

Ponseti, J.M. et al.

José M. Ponseti, Josep Gamez, Jamal Azem, José M. Fort, Manuel López-Cano, Ramón Vilallonga, Martín Buera, Manuel Armengol,

Post-thymectomy combined treatment of prednisone and tacrolimus versus prednisone alone for consolidation of complete stable remission in patients with myasthenia gravis: a non-randomized, non-controlled study.

BACKGROUND: Thymectomy is a standard treatment of myasthenia gravis (MG). Immunomodulating agents are frequently given during the post-thymectomy latency period until complete remission is fully consolidated. OBJECTIVE: A single-centre, non-randomized, non-controlled study was conducted to compare rates of complete stable remission (CSR) to post-thymectomy early treatment with prednisone alone or prednisone combined with tacrolimus, in 80 patients with MG. METHODS: Thirty-nine consecutive patients underwent elective transsternal extended thymectomy in 1997-1999 and received prednisone alone (1.5 mg/kg/day) postoperatively, whereas 41 patients operated on in 2000-2002 received prednisone combined with tacrolimus (0.1 mg/kg per day b.i.d. starting 24 hours after thymectomy). RESULTS: The mean follow-up was 59 months (SD 32.9) in the prednisone group and 35.9 months (SD 17.1) in the tacrolimus group (p = 0.003). CSR was achieved in 47.5% of patients in the tacrolimus group and in 41.0% in the prednisone group (p = 0.60). The estimated median follow-up to obtain a CSR in non-thymomatous MG was 38.2 months (95% confidence interval [CI] 30.1-46.4 months) for the tacrolimus group and 64.6 months (95% CI 50.9-78.2 months) for the prednisone group, and in patients with hyperplasia, 32.2 months (95% CI 23-41.5 months) and 62.9 months (95% CI 45.7-80.1 months), respectively (log-rank test, p = 0.03). The behavior of the two study groups stratified by thymic histology were significantly different (log-rank test, p = 0.006). CONCLUSIONS: Post-thymectomy administration of tacrolimus combined with prednisone was more effective than prednisone alone for the consolidation of CSR in a substantially shorter period of time in patients with MG.[1]

References

Post-thymectomy combined treatment of prednisone and tacrolimus versus prednisone alone for consolidation of complete stable remission in patients with myasthenia gravis: a non-randomized, non-controlled study. Ponseti, J.M., Gamez, J., Azem, J., Fort, J.M., López-Cano, M., Vilallonga, R., Buera, M., Armengol, M. Curr. Med. Res. Opin (2007) [Pubmed]

Annotations and hyperlinks in this abstract are from individual authors of WikiGenes or automatically generated by the WikiGenes Data Mining Engine. The abstract is from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.About WikiGenes Open Access Licence Privacy Policy Terms of Use apsburg

The world's first wiki where authorship really matters (Nature Genetics, 2008). Due credit and reputation for authors. Imagine a global collaborative knowledge base for original thoughts. Search thousands of articles and collaborate with scientists around the globe.