ABSTRACT
Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is a relapsing-remitting disease often requiring more than one line of therapy. Rituximab is a recommended second-line therapy, but the real-world data on its efficacy and safety from resource constraint settings is limited. We aimed to analyze the safety and efficacy of rituximab in ITP. This is a single-center, retrospective study. This study was conducted at a tertiary care hospital in Northern India from 2005 to 2019. On audit of medical records, all patients of ITP (n-513) who had received rituximab (n-81) were screened for inclusion. Patients whose response assessment was not possible were excluded. Finally, 66 patients were analyzed using statistical packages of Python v3.7. The cumulative incidence of overall response on day 20 was 30.61%, and day 30 was 51.72%. The median time to response was 28 day (range 21-51 day). Cumulative incidence of complete response was 16.67%, and partial response 37.88%. After a median follow-up of 789 day (range 181-5260 day), the cumulative incidence of relapse was 30.32%, 36.12%, and 56.57% at 1, 2, and 5 years respectively. There was no effect of age, sex, duration of disease, lines of therapy received, and platelet count on either cumulative incidence of overall response or relapse. ANA positivity was significantly related to the better cumulative incidence of overall response (p = 0.012), but not with relapse. Infusion-related reactions were the commonest adverse event noted (n-4, grade ≥ 3 CTCAEv4). Rituximab and its generic version are safe and effective second line agent in ITP with a good overall response and sustained response.
ABSTRACT
Introduction of imatinib has changed the outlook of chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML) patients with overall survival approaching general population. Long term survival in CML patients has provided an opportunity to better study natural history and long term complications of disease as well as the treatment modalities. To study the occurrence and association of other malignancies with their outcomes in patients with CML. This is a single centre retrospective study. All CML patients case records registered with haematology clinic of a tertiary care centre in North India from 2001 to 2014 were perused and evaluated for dual malignancies. Those patients with dual malignancies were personally examined and interviewed if alive. Out of 1677 patients, 15 cases had co-existent malignancies. Four of fifteen cases of dual malignancies had CML as secondary cancer. Three had synchronous and rest 12 patients had metachronous malignancies. Only one patient was in accelerated phase, rest all were in chronic phase. Median age of the dual malignancy cases was 50 years (25-66 years), much younger than reported in west. The initial dose of imatinib was 400 mg OD in all except one. We did not find any causal association between CML or imatinib therapy with development of secondary tumours. Interestingly in this series, incidence of CML as secondary or synchronous malignancy was higher than earlier published studies.
ABSTRACT
Malaria and leptospirosis are both common in the tropics. Simultaneous infections are possible, although not frequently reported. We report two cases of malaria from India with compelling serologic evidence of coexistent acute leptospirosis. One was a case of infection with Plasmodium falciparum with acute and convalescent microscopic agglutination test titers for Leptospira serovar icterohaemorrhagiae of 1:200 and 1:1600, respectively. The other was a case of infection with Plasmodium vivax that seroconverted to a titer of 1:3200 for Leptospira serovar batavia. Both patients finally improved with cephalosporins and doxycycline after no significant clinical/biochemical improvement with antimalarials standalone. It is proposed that febrile patients with hepato-renal dysfunction should be considered possible co-infection of malaria and leptospirosis.
