Active clinical trials for "Lupus Nephritis"

This is an open-label, randomized, multi-center, Phase IV study of Acthar Gel in patients with biopsy-proven membranous (Class V) lupus nephritis (LN) aimed at providing proof-of-concept data that Acthar is a safe and effective therapy for membranous LN. Class V LN is a secondary form of membranous nephropathy, and occurs in 8-20% of patients with LN. Two different doses of Acthar Gel will be tested. The active intervention phase of this study will take place over 6 months, and follow-up will occur over the following 6 months. Efficacy and safety of the use of Acthar Gel for treatment of membranous LN will be assessed and analyzed throughout the course of the study by laboratory testing, physical exams, and other evaluation tools. Subjects will be closely monitored for adverse effects associated with the use of Acthar gel and if necessary study drug dosing will be reduced. The anticipated benefits to subjects are a complete renal response rate of 40% at 6 months showing superiority over the published complete remission rates of the currently used immunosuppressive therapies, and no unexpected toxicity signals. Pure Class V LN affects a significant number of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients and although it is less aggressive than proliferative forms of LN it still causes important renal and non-renal morbidity and mortality over time, especially in patients who remain nephrotic. The therapy of Class V LN is not clear, and currently used therapies are highly toxic because of immunosuppression, risk of infertility, and risk of future malignancy. Additionally, these therapies are only modestly effective in inducing remissions of Class V LN. There is thus an unmet need for a more effective and less toxic treatment for Class V LN.

This is a Phase III, multicenter, extension study to evaluate the safety of rituximab administered on a scheduled basis approximately every 6 months. All subjects who complete their Week 52 visit in Study U2970g will be eligible for this study, as long as the inclusion and exclusion criteria are met.

Glomerulonephritis is an important manifestation in about 1/2 of patients with Systemic Lupus Nephritis (SLE; lupus). Despite recent national guidelines recommending use of induction therapy with high-dose corticosteroids and immunosuppressive agents, followed by prolonged maintenance therapy, up to 1/3 of these patients continue to have active nephritis and ongoing protein in the urine (proteinuria). It has long been recognized that both the level and chronicity of proteinuria in patients with lupus nephritis are associated with disease severity and with long-term prognosis, including the possibility of progression to complete kidney failure, which may occur in about 1/4 of patients. Pentoxifylline (PTX) is an oral medication introduced 45 years ago for treatment of vascular insufficiency. It has also recently been found to reduce proteinuria in patients with diabetic nephropathy. The mechanism of this unexpected and intriguing finding is not certain, but may in part involve inhibiting the production of TNF-alpha, an inflammatory cytokine known to be present in urine and kidneys of patients with lupus nephritis. Our hypothesis is that this inexpensive, generic drug, PTX, can significantly reduce proteinuria in patients with lupus nephritis. To test this hypothesis, we plan to initiate a 6-month, double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial of PTX or placebo in 40 patients with active lupus nephritis. This trial will include 6-8 patients from each of 5 different academic medical centers that specialize in the treatment of lupus nephritis. Our primary objective of this trial will be to measure urine protein each month to determine the extent to which PTX is able to reduce urine protein, and how rapidly this occurs. Concurrently, we will carefully follow these patients each month to determine whether PTX administration is also associated with stabilization of renal function, or with improvement in other manifestations of lupus, such as clinical disease activity or abnormal laboratory findings. A major secondary objective will be to explore the possible mechanism(s) whereby PTX reduces proteinuria. For this purpose, we will use the monthly urine specimens to measure TNF-alpha, and levels of several other proteins (IL-1, IL-6, IL-2, MCP-1, TGF-beta, PDGF, and IFN-alpha) that have been shown to contribute to inflammation and scarring in lupus nephritis. Comparison of levels of these inflammatory proteins with level of protein in the urine should help us to determine whether one or more of these proteins is a contributor to the severity or persistence of lupus nephritis. This information may also allow us to learn whether repeated measurements of these proteins can serve as biomarkers to assist in the ongoing management of patients with lupus nephritis. Finally, we hope to eventually measure levels of these inflammatory proteins in blood samples from the patients, to determine if PTX treatment can suppress (or enhance) such levels, and whether these changes are associated with reduced lupus disease activity, or improvement in other manifestations of lupus. Ultimately, it is our hope that the data from this clinical trial using a generic repurposed drug will permit us to conclusively confirm that PTX can significantly reduce proteinuria in patients with lupus nephritis, which would be of great benefit for the thousands of people who suffer with this most severe type of lupus.

There is debate as to whether long-term low-dose steroids such as prednisolone help to suppress relapses of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in patients who are in remission from their lupus nephritis. If low-dose prednisolone reduces relapses, these beneficial effects may be counter-balanced by the long-term side-effects associated with prednisolone. This pilot study will determine the feasibility of conducting a larger randomized control trial that will answer the question of whether or not long-term low-dose prednisolone (5 - 7.5 mg/day) reduces the flares of SLE in patients with previous lupus nephritis.

Meta-analyses in adults suggest equivalence of clinical efficacy of intravenous cyclophosphamide and mycophenolate mofetil when dosed based on patient weight or body-surface-area (MMFBSA), as is the current standard for the treatment of proliferative lupus nephritis (LN) treatments in the U.S. Pharmacokinetically-guided precision dosing of MMF (MMFPK) may offer a beneficial modification of the current standard treatment in that MMKPK promises over 30% higher LN response rates than MMFBSA. The objective of the proposed randomized, controlled study is to compare the efficacy and safety of pharmacokinetically-guided precision dosing of MMF (MMFPK) with conventional dosing regimens of MMF (MMFBSA) among children with proliferative LN.

The treatment of lupus nephritis with cyclophosphamide and steroids changed the prognosis of lupus nephritis in the early '80s. In recent years, alternative regimens have appeared in both the induction and maintenance with similar results at least to those offered by the classic pattern and possibly with fewer side effects, especially for long term. The association of prednison and mycophenolate has created large expectations to that effect, and is part of first-line therapeutic arsenal of lupus nephritis type III, IV and V. Despite the significant advances that have led to these treatments, the likelihood of complete remission after six months remains, according to the series of 8-13% and partial remission do not exceed 60% in papers published. In the last year, two articles have been published supporting the use of triple therapy (prednisone, mycophenolate, cyclosporine) in poor prognosis of lupus nephritis with hopefully better results than those obtained previously. In this study we try to compare the effectiveness of triple therapy, the therapy is now considered standard (prednisone, mycophenolate) in patients with lupus nephritis type III-IV-V

This is a pilot study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of Tacrolimus Sustained-release Capsules (ADVAGRAF) for the induction therapy of Lupus Nephritis (LN) (V, III +V, IV+V).

This study will collect high-quality randomized controlled data from a nationally representative sample of practicing rheumatologists to determine how they currently manage patients with SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus) and how the results of DxTerity's IFN-1 (interferon type I) test change clinical decision making.

Systemic lupus erythematosus is a chronic autoimmune disease, which can involve multiple systems and largely impair patients' health. Kidney is the one of the most commonly affected organs. It was reported that more than about 70% SLE patients developed lupus nephritis, which was highly associated with the long-term prognosis1,2. It will be a great advantage if the high-risk groups could be predicated and prevented with pre-treatment, the renal prognosis and survival would be promisingly improved. The incidence of lupus nephritis within past 10 years in new-onset SLE patients was recorded in our retrospective study, which was highest in their first-year, about 17%, and about 5% per year in the following years3. The raising of risk prediction models and the recognition of high-risk patients are quite important. The prediction model depends on the collection of patient phenotypes, which are scattered in various forms and very cumbersome. In our previous study, a total of 14,439 SLE patients were collected from the rheumatology and immunology departments of 13 Chinese tertiary hospitals in this study, including 13 062 females (90.46%), with an average age of 33.4 years, and the time span of EMR (Electronic Medical Records) was from October 28, 2001 to March 31, 2017. It includes basic information about patients, physical examination, inspection and diagnostic information, etc. We designed a hybrid NLP system combined NLP technical and expert knowledge at the same time, which was named as Deep Phenotyping System (DPS), to extract all the phenotypic information recorded in EMR. The DPS efficiently processed EMR data, and its accuracy, precision, and recall were each greater than 93%. It extracted 73 794 entities from 14,439 SLE cases, each with time attributes, and produced 18,785,000,640 entities. Thus, a LN prediction model was raised, which the likelihood of lupus patients without nephritis will develop lupus nephritis within half and one year can be predicted.) More than 35 000 phenotypes were used in this model and it was verified with independent samples. The best accuracy (ACC) and area under the curve (AUC) predicting the 1-year and 2-year risk of developing lupus nephritis can be achieved 0.88 and 0.86 respectively. The comprehensive SLE phenotype database constructed by NLP greatly improves the research efficiency of lupus clinical phenotype. We first proposed a predictive model of lupus nephritis, which is high applicability and efficiency. The experimental results of good close and open testing fully demonstrate the authenticity and practicality of this database. The research process and method based on real world data are also applicable to predict other important complications of lupus3. Till now, there were no studies investigating secondary prevention tools of lupus nephritis. However, as we all known, disease flare is a high-risk factor of cruel organ damage, and our previous data showed that lupus nephritis was one of the important flare patterns4. Two phase III, randomized, placebo-controlled studies, BLISS-52 and BLISS-76 showed that belimumab, the only FDA-approved biologic in SLE, targeting B Lymphocyte Stimulator, can reduce disease flares compared to standard-of-care (SOC) therapy5,6. A propensity-score matching study further proved that belimumab add on reduces organ damage progression as measured by SDI7. A pooled post-hoc analysis of the BLISS trials took a deeper look at renal outcome, and suggest that belimumab may offer renal benefit in patients with SLE, indicated by less renal flares in belimumab group, that is 1.1% versus 3.0 in the placebo8. We hypothesized and tried to analyze that whether belimumab could act as a secondary prevention tool for SLE patients at high-risk.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a heterogeneous autoimmune disease that involve s many different organs and display a variable clinical course. The prevalence of SLE varies across gender, race/ethnicity, and geographic regions. SLE demonstrates a striking female predominance with a peak incidence of disease during the reproductive years. In adults, the female to male ratio is 10-15:1. Clinical features in individual patients can be quite variable and range from mild joint and skin involvement to severe, life-threatening internal organ disease. Constitutional symptoms, rash, mucosal ulcers, inflammatory polyarthritis, photosensitivity, and serositis are the most common clinical features of the disease . Major organ affection in SLE includes Neuropsychiatric involvement (cognitive impairment, depression, psychosis, seizures, stroke, demyelinating syndromes, peripheral neuropathy, etc.) and cardiopulmonary manifestations. Lupus nephritis is the most common of the potentially life-threatening manifestations . Renal involvement is common in SLE and is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. It is estimated that as many as 90% of patients with SLE will have pathologic evidence of renal involvement on biopsy, but clinically significant nephritis will develop in only 50%. Lupus involvement in the kidney manifests as urinary findings (proteinuria, hematuria, pathologic casts) with or without a rise in serum creatinine. The specific criteria listed for renal involvement are a urine protein > 500 mg/dL or red blood cell casts, Lupus nephritis is often confirmed by kidney biopsy, with the results showing one or more of the classes of lupus nephritis. The metabolic syndrome is a prevalent disorder which is defined by the presence of central obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and disturbed glucose metabolism . It is known that Metabolic syndrome predisposes to cardiovascular disease (CVD) and consequently, to a rise in CVD morbidity and mortality. This syndrome plays a major role in the complex network of systemic pro-inflammatory and prothrombotic states involved in the development of CVD . Compared with patients without Metabolic syndrome, SLE patients from the multinational, multiethnic Systemic Lupus Erythematosus International Collaborating Clinics (SLICC) cohort with the diagnosis of Metabolic syndrome were older, had a higher disease activity, an increased number of recent disease flares, and had accrued more organ damage . Mok et al report that Metabolic syndrome is significantly associated with new organ damage, vascular events, and mortality in patients with SLE .