You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 78, Issue 6
  • Comparisons of hepatitis C viral replication in patients with rheumatoid arthritis receiving tocilizumab, abatacept and tofacitinib therapy

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Letter
Comparisons of hepatitis C viral replication in patients with rheumatoid arthritis receiving tocilizumab, abatacept and tofacitinib therapy
  1. Yi-Ming Chen1,2,3,4,
  2. Wen-Nan Huang1,3,
  3. Tsai-Ling Liao2,4,
  4. Jun-Pen Chen2,
  5. Sheng-Shun Yang3,5,
  6. Hsin-Hua Chen1,2,3,4,
  7. Tsu-Yi Hsieh1,
  8. Wei-Ting Hung1,
  9. Yi-Hsing Chen1,3,
  10. Der-Yuan Chen6,7
  1. 1 Division of Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
  2. 2 Department of Medical Research, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
  3. 3 Faculty of Medicine, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan
  4. 4 Institute of Biomedical Science and Rong Hsing Research Center for Translational Medicine, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan
  5. 5 Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
  6. 6 Rheumatology and Immunology Center, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan
  7. 7 School of Medicine, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan
  1. Correspondence to Professor Der-Yuan Chen, Rheumatology and Immunology Center, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, 40447, Taiwan; dychen{at}vghtc.gov.tw; Dr Yi-Hsing Chen, Division of Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung 40705, Taiwan; ysanne{at}vghtc.gov.tw

https://doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2018-214400

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.

    Despite recent advances in direct antiviral agents for hepatitis C virus (HCV), this infectious disease remains prevalent worldwide and presents a major therapeutic challenge in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).1 Our previous report demonstrated that use of antitumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α agents in patients with RA with HCV infection appears to be safe.2 However, B-cell-targeted therapy with rituximab may lead to HCV viraemia by causing a decline in exosomal microRNAs.3 Therefore, HCV viral replication may respond differently to biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (bDMARDs) and targeted synthetic DMARDs (tsDMARDs) owing to the different mechanism of action in patients with RA.

    Viral loads in HCV-infected patients with RA were reported to be unaffected during short-term therapy with tocilizumab, a monoclonal antibody targeting interleukin (IL)-6 receptor.4 5 Abatacept, a fusion protein binding cytotoxic T-lymphocyte–associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) that blocks the CD80/CD86 costimulatory pathways, has also been shown to be safe in patients with RA with HCV.6 It remains unclear whether tofacitinib, a Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitor,7 affects HCV viral activity in patients with RA. To …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Josef S Smolen

    • Contributors Y-MC and W-NH conceived and designed the study, conducted the data analysis, and drafted and revised the manuscript. J-PC performed the statistical analysis and revised the manuscript. T-LL, S-SY, H-HC, T-YH and W-TH acquired clinical data and revised the manuscript. D-YC and Y-HC generated the original hypothesis, conceived and designed the study, acquired clinical data, conducted the data analysis, and drafted and revised the manuscript.

    • Funding This study was supported by a grant from Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan (TCVGH-1077307C).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Obtained.

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