You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Letters
Anakinra for the management of resistant idiopathic recurrent pericarditis. Initial experience in 10 adult cases
  1. George Lazaros1,
  2. Panagiotis Vasileiou1,
  3. Christos Koutsianas2,
  4. Katerina Antonatou2,
  5. Christodoulos Stefanadis1,
  6. Dimitrios Pectasides2,
  7. Dimitrios Vassilopoulos2
  1. 1 1st Department of Cardiology, University of Athens Medical School, Hippokration General Hospital, Athens, Greece
  2. 2 2nd Department of Medicine and Laboratory, Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology Unit, University of Athens Medical School, Hippokration General Hospital, Athens, Greece
  1. Correspondence to
    Dr Dimitrios Vassilopoulos, Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology Unit, 2nd Department of Medicine and Laboratory, Hippokration General Hospital, University of Athens School of Medicine, 114 Vass. Sophias Ave., Athens 115 27, Greece; dvassilop{at}med.uoa.gr

https://doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-205990

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Recurrent idiopathic pericarditis is a common, problematic complication of acute pericarditis, occurring in approximately 30% of cases.1 Despite appropriate management with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), colchicine and corticosteroids (CS), a number of patients are either resistant to treatment requiring long-term therapy with high doses of CS or intolerant to therapy.2–4

    This disease is currently viewed as an autoinflammatory disease based on its clinical and laboratory features (recurrent episodes of sterile serosal inflammation in the absence of specific autoreactive antibodies or T cells),5–7 and the preliminary results showing favourable response to intereleukin-1 (IL-1) inhibition.8–10 Anakinra, a known IL-1 receptor antagonist, has been successfully used in small series of paediatric patients8 ,9 while we have recently first reported its efficacy and safety in three adult patients.10 In this report, we extend our follow-up on these three patients, and present data on seven more adult patients treated with anakinra. …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors GL: participated in study design and supervision; data acquisition, analysis and interpretation; and drafting, revision and final approval of the report; PV: participated in data acquisition, analysis and interpretation; drafting, revision and final approval of the manuscript; CK and KA: participated in data acquisition; drafting, revision and final approval of the manuscript; CS and DP: participated in study supervision; data interpretation; and drafting, revision and final approval of the report; DV: participated in study conception, design and supervision; data acquisition, analysis and interpretation; and drafting, revision and final approval of the report.

    • Funding Special Account for Research Grants (SARG), National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.

    • Competing interests None.

    • Ethics approval Institutional Review Board, Hippokration General Hospital.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.