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Date: 22 May 2012
Time: 16:50
Brum docs lead rare disease research
Story posted/last updated: 19 January 2011
Birmingham doctors are planning a national clinical trial into a treatment for a severe but little-known auto-immune condition called Sjögren’s syndrome, which affects around half a million people in the UK.
Sjögren’s syndrome causes the body to attack its own tissues, particularly the tear glands and salivary glands, causing dryness of the mouth and eyes, as well as extreme fatigue and organ damage.
Now Dr Simon Bowman, a consultant rheumatologist at Selly Oak Hospital with a special interest in the syndrome, has been awarded almost £1 million by medical research charity Arthritis Research UK to run a drug trial which he hopes will dramatically improve treatment.
Dr Bowman, who ran a small pilot study into Sjögren’s two years ago funded by the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham Charity, will now recruit up to 110 patients from hospitals around the country onto a full-scale clinical trial, comparing the drug rituximab against placebo in improving dryness and fatigue.
Rituximab is already licensed to treat severe rheumatoid arthritis, and works by attacking the body’s B-cells, which cause inflammation.
“Those of us with an interest in Sjögren’s have been talking about doing a trial like this for some years, so I’m delighted that we are finally getting to do it,” said Dr Bowman, who will be collaborating with Arthritis Research UK Professor of Rheumatology at Leeds University, Paul Emery and the Leeds Clinical Trials Unit; Professor Costantino Pitzalis of Queen Mary, University of London, and other colleagues.
“There is good background research to suggest that rituximab is worth looking at, and that this is a sensible trial to be doing,” adds Dr Bowman. “Our earlier pilot study showed that treating patients with a single course of the drug showed some improvement in fatigue, and an earlier Dutch study which looked at 30 patients also had resulted in improvement in fatigue levels and also the dryness symptoms.”
If the five-year trial is a success, Dr Bowman hopes that the manufacturers of rituximab, Roche, will take it forward to a commercial trial with a view to gaining a UK licence. There is a link between lymphoma and Sjögren’s, with patients at increased risk of developing lymphoma. Rituximab was first licensed to treat non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
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