New treatment found for GVH disease
SEATTLE, Jan. 24 (UPI) -- U.S. medical scientists have devised a treatment modification for gastrointestinal graft-versus-host disease that keeps the illness in remission.
Scientists from Seattle's The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center say GVHD is a common and potentially deadly side effect for patients who undergo an allogeneic stem-cell transplant to treat certain blood cancers. Now, the researchers have demonstrated adding a widely used topical corticosteroid to the standard GVHD treatment kept the disease in remission and significantly reduced deaths one year after therapy.
The reformulation of beclomethasone dipropionate into two different pills was designed to specifically release the drug into the stomach and mid-small intestine. That allowed patients to be on a shorter treatment course of high-dose prednisone. That resulted in mortality being reduced by 46 percent a year following the start of treatment in a multi-center Phase III clinical trial.
The study, led by Dr. David Hockenbery, a professor of medicine and gastroenterology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, appears in the current issue of the journal Blood. // Copyright 2007 by United Press International
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