Long-Term Safety and Efficacy of Eculizumab in Aquaporin-4 IgG-Positive NMOSD
Journal: Annals of Neurology; February 14, 2021
Author(s): Dean M Wingerchuk, Kazuo Fujihara, Jacqueline Palace, Achim Berthele, Michael Levy, Ho Jin Kim, Ichiro Nakashima, Celia Oreja-Guevara, Kai-Chen Wang, Larisa Miller, Shulian Shang, Guido Sabatella, Marcus Yountz, Sean J Pittock; PREVENT Study Group
Long-term safety and efficacy of eculizumab in NMOSD patients testing positive for aquaporin-4 antibodies
The PREVENT clinical trial was conducted for the medicine eculizumab, a recently approved therapy for NMOSD. This study was conducted as an interim analysis of eculizumab’s safety and efficacy during the open-label extension (the phase of a trial where participants are aware what drug they are being administered) of the PREVENT study. Across the PREVENT study and the open-label extension, 137 patients received eculizumab and were monitored for a median duration of 133 weeks (duration ranging from 5.1-276.9 weeks). At 192 weeks (3.7 years), 94.4% of patients remained relapse-free. During the open-label extension, 44 of 119 patients stopped or decreased the use of the background immunosuppressants they were on. The results of this study showed that eculizumab has a similar long-term safety profile in NMOSD as it is known to have for other conditions where it is approved. The results also showed that long-term eculizumab treatment had a sustained effect in reducing the relapse risk in patients with AQP4-antibody-positive NMOSD.
Free Access: Full text
