Lupus therapy works, not cure

CHICAGO – An experimental treatment for debilitating cases of lupus virtually erased symptoms for 50 percent of patients – but the therapy falls short of offering a cure, Chicago researchers reported Tuesday.

The results provide the first major assessment of a technique developed over the last decade at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Doctors gave infusions of bone marrow stem cells to 50 patients with advanced lupus in an effort to reset their faulty immune systems.

Early results were so encouraging that study leader Dr. Richard Burt speculated in 2000 that, in some cases, “the patient may actually be cured.”

That hope has faded somewhat. The new report, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concludes that patients have a fifty-fifty chance of relapse after five years. One patient died from an infection related to the treatment.

Yet the stem cell technique allowed half of patients to live normal lives, often after years spent suffering with ineffective and toxic medications.

“In lupus treatment we often reach a wall where we have nothing more to offer,” Burt said. “What we’ve done is hopefully move that wall further away.”

The Northwestern findings join a tide of new therapies being tested for lupus, an autoimmune disease that afflicts about 1.5 million Americans. Patients tend to be young women, with a median age around 30.