Paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration with anti-Yo antibodies associated with metastatic uveal melanoma.

Paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration (PCD) is characterized by subacute development of pancerebellar dysfunction as a remote effect of a systemic cancer and usually develops in patients affected by gynecological tumors. Uveal melanoma is a very rare disease with a severe prognosis. A 58-year-old man affected by uveal melanoma developed anti-Yo positive paraneoplastic cerebellar degeneration (PCD) 42 months after the initial diagnosis. The onset and worsening of the neurological symptoms were parallel to the course of liver metastasis. To our knowledge this is the first case of PCD in a patient with uveal melanoma. We speculate that the cerebellar degeneration-related protein 2 (CDR2), to which the anti-Yo antibodies are directed, may have been expressed in melanoma cells and conferred proliferative advantage to the disease.

The combination of rituximab, bendamustine, and cytarabine for heavily pretreated relapsed/refractory cytogenetically high-risk patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Treatment of patients with B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) relapsed/refractory (R/R) to conventional treatments is particularly challenging. The combination of bendamustine and cytarabine has demonstrated distinct and synergistic mechanisms of action in preclinical studies on cell lines and primary tumor cells of several B-cell lymphomas, including 17p deleted or TP53 mutated CLL. The efficacy of rituximab (375 mg/m(2) , Day 1), plus bendamustine (70 mg/m(2) , days 1-2), and cytarabine (800 mg/m(2) , Day 1-3; R-BAC), every 28 days for up to four courses, was evaluated in a pilot trial enrolling 13 patients with very selected high-risk R/R CLL. All patients (median age 60 years, range 53-74) had symptomatic Binet stage B or C active disease requiring treatment, were characterized by adverse cytogenetics (17p deletion, 11q deletion, or both), unmutated immunoglobulin heavy-chain variable region, and were heavily pretreated (1-5, median three previous lines). Overall, R-BAC was well tolerated with limited non-hematological toxicity. Major toxicities were transient Grade 3/4 neutropenia and thrombocytopenia in 84% and 85% of patients, respectively. Overall response rate (OR) was 84%, including complete and partial response in 38% and 46% of patients, respectively. Patients with 17p deletion had an OR of 78%. After a median follow-up of 17 months, median progression-free survival was 16 months while median overall survival (OS) was not reached (1-year OS: 75 ± 13%). R-BAC is an active regimen in R/R heavily pretreated high-risk patients with CLL, representing an option for the treatment of patients that are usually refractory to standard therapy.

Efficacy of high-dose intravenous immunoglobulins in two patients with idiopathic recurrent pericarditis refractory to previous immunosuppressive treatment.

Although idiopathic acute pericarditis is usually a self-limiting disease, in many patients it may recur over a period of months or years. Even if some evidence seems to suggest the possible role of a deranged immune reactivity in the pathogenesis of idiopathic recurrent pericarditis, the etiology of the disease is still unknown. Furthermore, while some trial data confirm the usefulness of colchicine, its medical treatment is not yet clearly established. We here report the clinical history of 2 patients with idiopathic recurrent pericarditis resistant to prednisone, colchicine and other immunosuppressive drugs, who have been successfully treated with high-dose intravenous immunoglobulins.