TREATMENT OF COLD AGGLUTININ DISEASE WITH RITUXIMAB
Abstract
BACKGROUND Cold agglutinin disease is an uncommon hemolytic anemia associated sometimes withlow-grade B-cell lymphoproliferative disorders. The disease results from increased production of anti erythrocyte antibodies. Standard treatment is mostly unsuccesful.Patient and A 76-years-old patient is presented who was diagnosed with hemolytic anemia caused bymethods cold agglutinins. Later a bone marrow located B cell CD 20 non Hodgkin lymphoma wasdiagnosed. Standard treatment was unsuccesful, so she received rituximab. After 3 cyclesthe signs of hemolysis disappeared and the hemoglobin level normalized. The patient istreated every 3 months with rituximab and is in complete remission. CONCLUSIONS Treatment with rituximab is used also for treating immune cytopenias. There are somereports of treating cold agglutinin anemia, where standard treatment is mostly withoutsuccess. As this is a rare disease only some small studies and case reports have demonstrated the beneficial effect of rituximab on this type of anemia. Despite its high price,rituximab has numerous advantages: immediate and long lasting effect and relatively fewside effectsDownloads
The Author transfers to the Publisher (Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal) all economic copyrights following form Article 22 of the Slovene Copyright and Related Rights Act (ZASP), including the right of reproduction, the right of distribution, the rental right, the right of public performance, the right of public transmission, the right of public communication by means of phonograms and videograms, the right of public presentation, the right of broadcasting, the right of rebroadcasting, the right of secondary broadcasting, the right of communication to the public, the right of transformation, the right of audiovisual adaptation and all other rights of the author according to ZASP.
The aforementioned rights are transferred non-exclusively, for an unlimited number of editions, for the term of the statutory
The Author can make use of his work himself or transfer subjective rights to others only after 3 months from date of first publishing in the journal Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal.
The Publisher (Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal) has the right to transfer the rights, acquired parties without explicit consent of the Author.
The Author consents that the Article be published under the Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 (attribution-non-commercial) or comparable licence.
