Purpose: Only a fraction of patients do benefit from disease modifying treatments in RRMS and data on IVIG are controversial, it has been suggested that there is a subpopulation of patients with good clinical response to IVIG.
Methods: In the prospective, multicenter, open label, exploratory study RRMS patients receiving IVIG therapy were genotyped and several immune parameters were collected.
Results: To distinguish between potential responders and non-responders each of the observed genotypes was combined with the corresponding scores of 65 immune parameters in a stepwise approach. Non-responders were defined as being positive for 4 or more out of 9 individual scores. Responders scored either 0 or 1, while non-responders scored between 7 and 9 (p=1.2∗10(-7)).
Conclusions: In summary, combination of genomic and functional immune parameters allowed prospective discrimination between responders and non-responders towards IVIG therapy in this learning panel of RRMS patients and will be confirmed in a validation study.
Keywords: Individualized immunotherapy; Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG); Prospective clinical study; Prospective responder discrimination; Relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS).
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