First New Treatment for Lupus In 50 Years

Reported January 2010

BALTIMORE, Md. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Lupus is a chronic and often disabling disease. Ninety percent of those diagnosed are female. It can affect patient's skin, kidneys, heart, joints, and their brain. There is no cure, and few drugs have been available to help … until now.

Since she was 14 years old, Kathi Ruffatto has been living with a disease that at first doctors couldn't diagnose.

"My mom had been taking me to see different doctors to see if they could figure out why my joints are so swollen, why I was so tired, why my cheeks were so red," Ruffato recalled to Ivanhoe.

Ruffatto learned she has lupus … it's a terrible and often disabling autoimmune disease, causing the immune system to attack the body's own tissues and organs.

"I still can't really predict how I'm going to feel next week or a month from now," Ruffato said.

Medications available only treat the symptoms and often have serious side effects. Now, a new drug treatment for lupus, called Benlysta, brings new hope to patients. It will be the first drug approved to treat lupus in decades.

Michelle Petri, M.D., a rheumatologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., has watched the drug change lives.

"Benlysta calmed down the symptoms of active lupus," Dr. Petri explained. "It prevented lupus flare-ups and improved the quality of life of lupus patients, such as improving fatigue."

In lupus patients, a naturally occurring protein called blys encourages the immune system to make antibodies that attack the body. Benlystra binds to blys, preventing those anti-bodies from being made.

"It's going to be a huge advance to have access to new biologics that target the things that go wrong in lupus, without messing up the rest of the immune system," Dr. Petri said.

More than half of patients on the new drug treatment had significant improvement in their disease.

"I am still going to school," Ruffato said. "I would like to go to nursing school in a year. So I feel really good."

It's a good feeling of hope for lupus patients.

The new treatment is taken intravenously in one-hour outpatient sessions, once a month.

The American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

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Dan Page
Vice President, National Health Media Relations, Edelman
New York, NY 10013
(513) 528 0175
Dan.Page@edelman.com

American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists
Joseph Catapano
Communication Specialist
(703) 248-4772
http://www.aapspharmaceutica.com
catapanoj@aaps.org

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