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Leflunomide treatment in corticosteroid-dependent myasthenia gravis: an open-label pilot study

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Abstract

Leflunomide is an effective drug used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Here we report the findings of an open-label pilot study, which found that leflunomide is also an effective treatment for myasthenia gravis (MG). This study recruited 15 corticosteroid-dependent MG patients. For 6 months, leflunomide 20 mg was given to these patients daily along with prednisone. The quantitative myasthenia gravis (QMG) scores and MG activities of daily living (MG-ADL) profiles were measured in these MG patients. After 6 months of treatment, 9 of the 15 patients enrolled in this study showed improvements in both QMG and MG-ADL. The mean QMG scores (13.4 to 8.5) and MG-ADL profiles (5.8 to 2.8) were significantly decreased (P = 0.01, 0.006 respectively). Furthermore, we found that the mean corticosteroid doses were reduced after treatment with leflunomide (24.3 to 12.3 mg per day). Leflunomide is a well-tolerated and efficacious treatment for corticosteroid-dependent MG, which may also enable lower doses of corticosteroids to be administered.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the China National Natural Science Foundation (30870850, 81071002 and 81371386) and the Clinic Study of 5010 Plan, Sun Yat-sen University (2010003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, 58 Zhongshan 2nd Rd, Yuexiu, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China

    Pei Chen, Huiyu Feng, Juan Deng, Yufei Luo, Li Qiu, Changyi Ou & Weibin Liu

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  1. Pei Chen
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  2. Huiyu Feng
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  3. Juan Deng
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  4. Yufei Luo
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  5. Li Qiu
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  6. Changyi Ou
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  7. Weibin Liu
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Correspondence to Weibin Liu.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical standards

This study was approved by the appropriate ethics committees in the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University and complied with the standards set by the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki, and its later amendments. All participants gave informed consent prior to enrollment in the study.

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Chen, P., Feng, H., Deng, J. et al. Leflunomide treatment in corticosteroid-dependent myasthenia gravis: an open-label pilot study. J Neurol 263, 83–88 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-015-7944-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00415-015-7944-8

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