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Drug may become 1st scleroderma treatment
Investigators at the Hospital for Special Surgery say the drug Gleevec, currently approved for treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumor, might be successful in scleroderma therapy.
"There has never been a drug that has been shown to be effective for this condition. I think there is a very good chance of Gleevec becoming a real treatment for a previously untreatable disease," Dr. Robert Spiera, who led the research, said.
In the new study, researchers enrolled 30 patients with a severe form of scleroderma and gave them 400 mg of Gleevec daily.
The investigators -- in an interim analysis of their ongoing study -- saw a 23 percent improvement in skin scores, as well as improvement in forced vital capacity and diffusion capacity scores.
"The lung function data was really exciting," Spiera said. "In patients with scleroderma, you usually see lung function tests getting worse over time, and if doctors try a therapy for a year and a patient doesn't get any worse, we get pretty excited. What is amazing to me in this study is that we actually saw improvements in both lung function tests."
The research was presented this week in Philadelphia during the annual meeting of the American College of Rheumatology.
Copyright 2009 by United Press International
This news arrived on: 10/21/2009
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