Study Status: Not yet recruiting
Recruit Status: Not yet recruiting
Study Type: Interventional
Official Title: Randomized, Controlled, Double-blind Study of Anakinra Against Placebo in Addition to Steroids in Giant Cell Arteritis
Brief Summary:
SYNOPSIS The giant cell arteritis (GCA) is the most frequent vasculitis in people over 50 years. Despite recent progress and physiopathogenic, corticosteroids remains the standard treatment for decades with a very good initial clinical efficacy but a high relapse rate (nearly 40% to 6,5 months) during its decay. This sensible population is particularly exposed to the side effects of corticosteroids, leading to think about savings strategies. But the association of immunosuppressive therapy and/or anti- TNFα has not demonstrated benefits in terms of efficiency or long-term tolerance to cumulative doses of prednisone. The responsibility of proinflammatory cytokines such as TNFα, IL- 6 and IL-1 has been studied in the pathogenesis of GCA in temporal artery walls and in mouse models. The primary pathogenic role of IL- 1 is based on the increase in serum or nuclear protein itself or that of its mRNA. The study of temporal artery biopsies has shown increased local production of IL- 1β mRNA, IL- 6 and TGFβ (indicative of macrophage activation ) and those of INFɣ and IL 2 (indicative of T lymphocyte activation). Recently, Ly et al (Ly KH JBS 2014) reported the efficacy of anakinra, a recombinant molecule of IL- 1RA specifically blocking the IL- 1 α/β, in three cases GCA refractory to conventional treatments.
Here investigators propose a randomized, multicenter, controlled, double-blind study of anakinra against placebo in addition to corticosteroids in the treatment of GCA.
This study will include 70 patients randomized equally in both arms: reference treatment (prednisone plus placebo) or the experimental treatment (prednisone + anakinra). Treatment with prednisone will be identical in the two arms, namely a dose of 0.7 mg/kg/day orally on day 1, followed by a progressive decrease in the dose pa