Mycophenolate mofetil for the treatment of systemic lupus erythematosus: an open pilot trial

Abstract

Mycophenolate mofetil is a promising option in immunosuppressive treatment of patients with moderate and severe systemic lupus erythematosus who did not show a satisfactory response to other immunosuppressives.

Experimental and clinical rationale for use of MMF in nontransplant progressive nephropathies

“…However, most of the studies reported to date have been either anecdotal (21,29) or based on uncontrolled observations of adult (16,27,39) and pediatric (9) SLE patients. In a cohort of 42 patients with diffuse proliferative lupus nephritis, Chan and co-workers (10) compared the renal protective effect and the toxicity of a combined prednisolone and MMF treatment given for 12 mo (group 1; 21 patients) with those of an association of prednisolone and cyclophosphamide maintained for 6 mo, followed by treatment with prednisolone and azathioprine for another 6 mo (group 2; 21 patients).…”

Mycophenolate mofetil: A safe and promising immunosuppressant in neuromuscular diseases

“…In an established autoimmune disease such as MG, treatment with a drug that is not cytocidal would not be expected to produce rapid benefit. [6][7][8] Because preexisting autosensitized lymphocytes are not eliminated by MM, improvement depends upon these lymphocytes dying, which occurs gradually. 4 Immunomodulatory treatment for MG entails evaluating several factors, including onset of action of the available agents, their efficacy, and their side effects.…”

“…5 It has also been reported to be of benefit in other immune-mediated diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, and systemic lupus erythematosus. [6][7][8] The principal adverse reactions associated with MM include diarrhea, leukopenia, sepsis, vomiting, and a higher frequency of certain types of infections. It is thought to entail a lower risk for late malignancies than other drugs such as azathioprine and cyclophosphamide, which can be mutagenic or can decrease T-cell surveillance over lymphomas related to EpsteinBarr virus.…”

Mycophenolate in Refractory and Relapsing Lupus Nephritis

“…While ethnicity plays a role in the response to immunosuppressive treatment in LN [34], it seems that the response to MF in refractory or relapsing disease does not differ in patients from different ethnic groups. In fact, the cases reported to date are from the USA [8,18,19], South America [13,26], Canada (in children) [35], Europe [9,10,12,14,20,23,24,25,30], Australia [21], and Asia [11,22,27,28,29]. …”

“…The first clinical series of patients with relapsing or refractory LN after treatment with CYC who received MF were published in the late 1990s and revealed an improvement in proteinuria and renal function [8,18,19,20]. Subsequently, several observational and uncontrolled studies also described the beneficial effect of MF in refractory or relapsing LN, indicating that switching from CYC to MF is a reasonable alternative strategy [9,10,11,12,13,14,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29].…”