CASE REPORT
Targeted Therapy with Rituximab in Felty’s Syndrome: A Case Report
Line Heylen 1, Daan Dierickx 2, Peter Vandenberghe 3, René Westhovens*, 1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2012Volume: 6
First Page: 312
Last Page: 314
Publisher ID: TORJ-6-312
DOI: 10.2174/1874312901206010312
Article History:
Received Date: 25/9/2012Revision Received Date: 20/10/2012
Acceptance Date: 25/10/2012
Electronic publication date: 16/11/2012
Collection year: 2012
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Felty’s syndrome is a rare, severe extra-articular manifestation of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). There is no standard therapy, and several disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs have been used with varying success. Only very few reports exist in literature on the use of biologicals in this indication and this with a variable efficacy. We report the case of a 53-year-old woman with severe refractory/partly undertreated RA who presented with Felty’s syndrome and pancytopenia, in whom treatment with rituximab led to an marked increase of red blood cells, neutrophils and thrombocytes. In addition, the RA disease activity status improved dramatically and treatment with steroids could be reduced. The current sparse literature on this topic is reviewed.
