Disappearance of bone marrow B cell clonal expansion in patients with type II hepatitis C virus-related cryoglobulinemic glomerulonephritis after clinical efficient rituximab therapy

L Quartuccio, S Salvin, M Fabris, S Sacco, S De Vita

Rheumatology Clinic, DPMSC, Ospedale Universitario, Udine, Italy

Correspondence to:
Salvatore De Vita, Clinic of Rheumatology, Ospedale Università Udine, DPMSC, University of Udine, Italy, Piazzale Santa Maria della Misericordia 1, 33100 Udine, Italy; devita.salvatore@aoud.sanita.fvg.it

Accepted 28 January 2008

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Preliminary data provided encouraging results on efficacy and safety of B cell depletion with rituximab in active glomerulonephritis in the course of mixed cryoglobulinemia (MC).^{1 2}

B cell oligomonoclonal expansion in peripheral blood and in bone marrow (BM) seems to be a key pathological and molecular feature in MC.^{3 4} Recently, renal involvement in MC has been associated with B cell clonal expansion in the BM.⁵ We report new data on the possible relationship between clinical efficacy of rituximab in MC nephritis and the disappearance of BM B cell clonal expansion after (month +6) rituximab administration demonstrated by molecular studies (fig 1).⁴

View larger version (77K):   Figure 1 Bone marrow (BM) B cell expansion before and after rituximab. Bone marrow B cell expansion was evaluated in BM needle aspiration samples by semi-nested PCR using an upstream primer directed to the third framework variable (V) region of the IgH genes and downstream primers directed to the joining . . . [Full text of this article]

 

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