Advances in the maintenance of ANCA vasculitis remission

Abstract

The maintenance treatment of ANCA-associated vasculitides (AAVs) has benefited from the results of several prospective clinical trials focusing on the evaluation of new drugs, therapeutic strategies, and adjuvant treatments. They also showed that rituximab was the most effective agent to maintain remission. However, because treatments can induce adverse events, including facilitating infections, therapeutic strategies should be adapted to find the optimal dose(s) and their administration duration(s) and to make them commensurate to the expected severity of relapse. That task is not easy to achieve because we have not yet been able to identify the clinical or biological parameters that can predict when a relapse will occur and its severity. Among AAVs, eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA) has pathogenic and clinical specificities, and new drugs directly address those features. If rituximab could have a place such as in other AAVs, anti-IL5 biotherapies could also be prescribed successfully for maintenance. Another aim of vasculitis maintenance therapy is to control the disease with less prednisone than in the past. Herein, we emphasize the importance of individually devising a maintenance regimen adapted to the objectives of keeping the patient in remission without the adverse events related to the prescribed treatment(s).

Keywords: ANCA; Anti-CD20; Corticosteroids; Cyclophosphamide; French vasculitis study group; Immunosuppressants; Plasma exchanges; Rituximab; Vasculitis.