Tag: alemtuzumab

Hepatitis post-alemtuzumab

Another alemtuzumab-related post, this time in relation to alemtuzumab-associated liver injury, which has been also been included as a complication of alemtuzumab treatment in the EMA’s SmPC (summary of product characteristics).

Liver or hepatic injury can occur as part of a drug-induced injury as seen in case 2 below or as a delayed, presumably autoimmune, condition as in case 1 below. Please be aware autoimmune hepatitis has been described in association with all licensed MS DMTs including the original injectable therapies, i.e. interferon beta and glatiramer acetate. I have always considered this to be a simple association, i.e. pwMS are at risk of developing comorbid autoimmune hepatitis.

Again I think autoimmune hepatitis is a rare complication if it is a complication, of alemtuzumab treatment. You need to be vigilant of any new symptoms and get medical help immediately if you experience any of the following:

  1. Yellow skin or eyes
  2. Dark urine
  3. Bleeding or bruising more easily than normal
Image from Wikipedia

El Sankari et al. Auto-immune hepatitis in a patient with multiple sclerosis treated with alemtuzumab. Acta Neurol Belg. 2018 Jun;118(2):331-333.

Case 1

25-year-old female patient was diagnosed with RR-MS in September 2011. The patient received two courses of ATZ in November 2014 and 2015 successively. She remained stable with an EDSS score of 4 and no recurrence of disease activity on brain MRI. Eleven months following the last ATZ course, laboratory assessments revealed hyperthyroidism attributed to Grave’s disease. l-thyroxin and thiamazol were initiated.

An increase in liver enzymes occurred 1 month later, while thyroid function was normalized. Despite the interruption of thiamazol, liver dysfunction persisted.

Liver biopsy showed a diffuse, severe and mixed inflammatory infiltrate, composed of lymphocytes, eosinophils and neutrophils, infiltrating the limiting plate, surrounding the portal triad, and sparing the biliary tract. A diagnosis of type 1 autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) was made.

Standard treatment, consisting of 1 mg/kg/day of prednisolone, was initiated, with a transient episode of encephalopathy, resolving after corticosteroid dose reduction (to 0.5 mg/kg/day). 1 month later, the patient improved clinically and her laboratory abnormalities resolved; prednisolone doses were then slowly decreased, and immunosuppressive treatment with azathioprine was introduced.

Beattie e al.  Acute severe hepatitis with alemtuzumab and rechallenge after a year. J Clin Neurosci. 2019 Feb;60:158-160

Case 2

This patient developed severe hepatitis within two days of starting alemtuzumab, both initially and upon rechallenge. The alanine aminotransferase peaked at 577 units per litre and 426 units per litre after the initial dose of alemtuzumab and rechallenge respectively. The patient’s liver function tests improved significantly between doses of alemtuzumab and again normalised within three months of the second dose, with no clinical manifestations of acute hepatic failure.

CoI: multiple

News for alemtuzumabers

Prof G what can be done to manage my hyperthyroidism if I want to fall pregnant?

Carbimazole is associated with an increased risk of congenital malformations, especially when administered in the first trimester of pregnancy and at high doses. Women of childbearing potential should use effective contraception during treatment with carbimazole.

Carbimazole: increased risk of congenital malformations; strengthened advice on contraception

As you know about 40% of women treated with alemtuzumab go onto to develop hyperthyroidism. The number one drug for controlling thyrotoxicosis is carbimazole. The fact that it is teratogenic is a problem as a lot of women with MS choose to be treated with alemtuzumab so that they can fall pregnant safely off a DMT.

Endocrinologists will have to rely on using propylthiouracil another oral medication that is used to manage hyperthyroidism. Although propylthiouracil may be given in pregnancy it crosses the placenta and in high doses may cause foetal goitre and hypothyroidism, therefore the lowest possible dose should be given and thyroid function monitored every 4-6 weeks to maintain optimum control. Propylthiouracil also transfers to breast milk but this does not necessarily preclude breastfeeding. Neonatal development and infant thyroid function should be closely monitored.

The management of MS gets more complex. I am becoming an endocrinologist in my spare time 😉

NEDADI or ‘Nee Daddy’ another treatment target beyond NEDA

Prof G do you think disability improvement is a reasonable treatment goal?

NEDADI = no evident disease activity and disability improvement

Two weeks ago one of my patients with PPMS, who we treated with off-label subcutaneous cladribine, came for her annual follow-up appointment. Despite being treated with cladribine over 2 years ago she has unfortunately progressed from EDSS 5.5 to 6.5. Her latest MRI brain did not show any new T2 lesions. She asked why we hadn’t scanned her spinal cord. She is desperate for us to find some disease activity so that she can be retreated or preferably offered ocrelizumab. She has a well-off family member who is prepared to cover the costs of ocrelizumab treatment privately. What should I do?

As you know I don’t support private prescribing in the NHS as it undermines the NHS’ founding principles; free at the point of access and equity. However, it is difficult to say no to private prescribing if a patient insists, particularly as there is now a mechanism to do this under the NHS. I am also first a doctor looking after the individual patient and this takes priority over my duty as an NHS employee and guardian of its socialist healthcare ideals.

I didn’t agree to a private prescription for ocrelizumab. Instead, I batted the problem into the long grass and agreed to bring her via our planned investigation unit for an MRI of the spine and lumbar puncture to measure CSF neurofilament levels. If there are new spinal cord lesions and/or a raised CSF neurofilament level then we could potentially look at an additional course of cladribine, off-label rituximab under the NHS, private ocrelizumab or possible recruitment into a clinical trial. I suspect that the MRI will show no new lesions and the CSF NFL levels will be normal. If this is the case then she has NEDA with worsening disability. I did refer her to my blog post on this issue (EXPLAINING WHY YOU GET WORSE DESPITE BEING NEDA) so she could get some understanding of what was happening to her.

During the consultation, she asked me ‘why a friend’s daughter with very bad MS, who had been treated with alemtuzumab, had made such a remarkable recovery?’ Apparently, this young woman had been rendered partially paraplegic from a spinal relapse and after alemtuzumab had recovered function and was now walking almost ‘normally’ again. My patient wanted to know why there was such a difference between herself, someone with PPMS, and her friend’s daughter a young woman with highly-active RRMS.

You may remember the other day I asked you to guess why I was so impressed with the HSCT-MIST trial. Let me try and explain why.

Should we be changing our expectations of what DMTs can offer pwMS? Are we entering an era when the expectation of disability improvement becomes the norm? I certainly hope so.

The most impressive aspect of the recent HSCT-MIST trial was not the NEDA data or the improved safety of HSCT, which are obviously important, but the disability improvement data. During the first year post-HSCT the mean EDSS scores improved from 3.4 to 2.4 vs. a worsening from 3.3 to 4.0 in those on the basket of licensed DMTs. Is this unique to HSCT? How does this HSCT data compare to other treatment options?

The first DMT to show a convincing impact on disability improvement in a phase 3 controlled trial was with natalizumab in the AFFIRM study; at 2 years the probability of a sustained improvement in disability was 30% for natalizumab-treated patients and 19% for patients who received placebo.

Phillips  et al. Sustained improvement in Expanded Disability Status Scale as a new efficacy measure of neurological change in multiple sclerosis: treatment effects with natalizumab in patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis. Mult Scler. 2011 Aug;17(8):970-9.

The next convincing phase 3 result was with alemtuzumab-treated patients in the CARE-MS2 trial; alemtuzumab-treated patients were more than twice as likely as IFN-β-1a-treated patients to experience 3-month confirmed disability improvement (35% vs 19%).

Giovannoni et al. Alemtuzumab improves preexisting disability in active relapsing-remitting MS patients. Neurology. 2016 Nov 8;87(19):1985-1992.

Unfortunately, the latest HSCT trial did not report their disability improvement data as confirmed or sustained disability improvement at 3 months. The main reason for this was methodological in that patients patients on DMTs had a rescue option of being treated with HSCT. However, in the first 12 months, 12/55 (22%) of patients on DMTs compared to 38/55 (69%) who were treated with HSCT had an improvement in their EDSS. Based on the final data set I suspect that in a large proportion of the HSCT patients the improvements were sustained.

Burt et al.  Effect of Nonmyeloablative Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation vs Continued Disease-Modifying Therapy on Disease Progression in Patients With Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2019 Jan 15;321(2):165-174.

What about the new kids on the block, i.e. ocrelizumab and cladribine? Unfortunately, we don’t have published data on cladribine, but I will try and rectify this and will ask for the analysis to be done. However, the phase 3 pooled OPERA data of ocrelizumab has been published; 21% of ocrelizumab-treated patients had disability improvement confirmed after at least 12 weeks compared to only 16% of  IFN-β-1a-treated patients.

Hauser et al. Ocrelizumab versus Interferon Beta-1a in Relapsing Multiple Sclerosis. N Engl J Med. 2017 Jan 19;376(3):221-234.

So the league table for disability improvement of HSCT over alemtuzumab, over natalizumab, followed by ocrelizumab seems to mirror the brain atrophy or end-organ damage data. Are you surprised? I am not. A large driver of disability improvement is reserve capacity, i.e. brain reserve or put simply the size of your brain, which predicts and provides the substrate for recovery. This is another reason why you would want your MS treated early and just maybe you would want to flip the pyramid and go for the DMTs that offer you the best chance of disability improvement.

Hidden in this data may be a clue about the pathogenesis of MS. What differentiates HSCT and alemtuzumab from natalizumab and then from ocrelizumab? Could it be the transient depletion and reconstitution of the T-cell compartment?

Joanne Jones and her colleagues from Cambridge showed that among trial participants with no clinical disease activity immediately before treatment, or any clinical or radiological disease activity on-trial, disability improved after alemtuzumab but not following interferon β-1a. They suggested that this disability improvement after alemtuzumab could not be attributable to its anti-inflammatory effects and suggested that T lymphocytes, reconstituting after alemtuzumab, permit or promote brain repair via the production of growth factors in particular brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF),  platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) and ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF). If their hypothesis holds out then this may be another reason why NIRTs (non-selective immune reconstitution therapies) outperform SIRTs (selective immune reconstitution therapies) in going beyond NEDA, i.e NEDADI. And just maybe you need these cells to traffic to the central nervous system to deliver these growth factors.

Jones et al. Improvement in disability after alemtuzumab treatment of multiple sclerosis is associated with neuroprotective autoimmunity. Brain. 2010 Aug;133(Pt 8):2232-47.

Another piece of the puzzle is the positive effect alemtuzumab has on the MRI metric called magnetization transfer ratio or MTR, which is a measure of tissue integrity. In a small study, the mean MTR fell in 18 untreated MSers in normal-appearing grey and white matter. Conversely, mean MTR was stable in 20 alemtuzumab-treated MSers, which suggests alemtuzumab protects against tissue damage. This MTR data mirrors the clinical observations and is congruent with some of the basic science. Wouldn’t it be nice to do an experiment of using natalizumab post-alemtuzumab to see if by blocking T-cell trafficking we blunt the alemtuzumab-associated improvement in disability, i.e. to test whether T-cell trafficking is required to drive repair mechanisms?

Button et al. Magnetization transfer imaging in multiple sclerosis treated with alemtuzumab.  Mult Scler. 2013 Feb;19(2):241-4.

So what do I tell my patient? Do I tell her that the reason why she has not improved is that she is older, has more advanced MS and hence less reserve capacity to allow disability improvement? Or that we may not have tackled the root cause of her MS with subcutaneous cladribine? I stuck to the former explanation as the latter is simply a hypothesis that needs more thinking, more debate and some new experiments to establish if the treatment hierarchy in relation to end-organ damage and disability improvement is based on the different modes of action of our DMTs.

Despite the reasons behind these observations we are now entering an era were disability improvement is not an unreasonable expectation for pwMS, provided they are treated early and with high-efficacy DMTs.

How many you have been told about disability improvement on DMTs?

CoI: multiple, please note that I am a co-author on the natalizumab, alemtuzumab and ocrelizumab disability improvement papers.

Beyond NEDA

Prof G are we being lulled into a false sense of security by being told that we have no evident disease activity (NEDA)?

A patient of mine, who I have been looking after now for over 11 years, asked me in clinic a few weeks ago why despite being NEDA for 6 years, on a highly effective maintenance DMT (fingolimod), has she gone from being able to run 5-10 km to needing a stick and barely managing to walk from the Whitechapel Underground Station to my clinic (~200m), without having to stop and rest?

What this patient doesn’t know, despite no new visible T2 lesions, is that she has developed obvious, to the naked eye, progressive brain atrophy.  This particular patient prompted me to write a few blog posts to try and explain what is happening to her brain. Before reading the remainder of this post you may want to read the following posts:

An important question in relation to this patient is why do some DMTs have such a profound impact on end-organ damage markers, in particular, brain volume loss and others do not? Not all DMTs are made equal when it comes to preventing, or slowing down, brain volume loss.

At the top of the league table are alemtuzumab and HSCT (~0.2-0.25% loss per annum). Both these treatments are NIRTs (non-selective immune reconstitution therapies). Natalizumab is next with an annual brain volume loss in region of 0.25-0.30% per annum. Ocrelizumab (anti-CD20) comes fourth with a rate of brain volume loss of ~0.30-0.35% per annum. Fingolimod 5th at ~0.4% per annum. Cladribine has a rate of loss of brain volume of ~0.55% per annum with the other runs after that.

For me, the disappointment are the anti-B cell therapies, ocrelizumab and cladribine. Despite these DMTs being very effective at switching off new focal inflammatory lesions (relapses and new T2 and Gd-enhancing lesions) their impact on end-organ damage is only moderate. These observations have convinced me more than ever that focal inflammation is not MS, but simply the immune system’s response to what is causing MS. The latter hypothesis is what I have been presenting as part of my ‘Field Hypothesis’ for several years on this blog.

What these observations are telling me is that peripheral B-cells are a very important part of the immune response to the cause of MS, but they are not necessarily involved in driving the true pathology, which is causing the progressive brain volume loss. The caveat to this is that anti-CD20 therapies and cladribine may not be eliminating the B-cells and plasma cells within the CNS, which is why we need add-on treatments to try and scrub the brain free of these cells to see if the brain atrophy rate ‘normalises’. This is why we are starting a safety study this year of an add-on myeloma drug to target the CNS B-cell and plasma cell response to test this hypothesis.

What does this mean for the average person with MS? Firstly, you may not want to dismiss alemtuzumab and HSCT as a treatment option. These NIRTS differ from anti-CD20 therapies and cladribine in that they target both B and T cells. We may need to target both these cells types to really get on top of MS. I am aware of the appeal of anti-CD20 therapies and cladribine; they are safer and easier to use because of less monitoring, however, this may come at a cost in the long-term. The SIRTs (selective IRTs) may not be as good as the NEDA data suggests. Please remember that once you have lost brain you can’t get it back.

The tradeoff with alemtuzumab and HSCT is the frontloading of risk to get the greatest efficacy over time. Choosing a DMT on a rung or two down on the therapeutic ladder gives you better short-term safety and makes the lives of your MS team easier, because of less monitoring, but at a potential long-term cost to your brain and spinal cord.  This is why to make an informed decision about which DMT you choose is a very complicated process and subject to subtle and often hidden effects of cognitive biases. The one bias I am very aware of is the ‘Gambler’s Dilemma’, be careful not to be lulled into a false sense of security by your beliefs; most gamblers lose.

Over the last few years you may have seen a theme developing in my thinking as we move the goalposts in terms of our treatment target beyond NEDA-3 to target end-organ damage, i.e. brain volume loss, T1 black holes, the slowly expanding lesions (SELs), neurofilament levels, cognition, sickness behaviour, OCBs, etc. Our treatment aim should be to ‘Maximise Brain Health’ across your life and not just the next decade. Please stop and think!

When I was preparing this post I dropped Prof. Doug Arnold an email about the impact of alemtuzumab and HSCT on the slowly expanding lesion or SEL. Unfortunately, these analyses have not been done despite good trial data sets being available for analysis. He said it was a resource issue; i.e. a euphemism for money and permission to do the analyses. For me, these questions are the most important ones to answer in 2019. Wouldn’t you want to know if alemtuzumab and HSCT were able to switch off those destructive SELs in your brain? Knowing this may impact your decision to go for the most effective DMTs; frontloading risk to maximise outcomes in the long term.

What should I advise my patient; to stay on fingolimod or to escalate to a more effective DMT?

The following articles are the important ones for you to read or at least be aware of:

Article 1

Lee et al. Brain atrophy after bone marrow transplantation for treatment of multiple sclerosis. Mult Scler. 2017 Mar;23(3):420-431.

BACKGROUND:  A cohort of patients with poor-prognosis multiple sclerosis (MS) underwent chemotherapy-based immune ablation followed by immune reconstitution with an autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant (IA/aHSCT). This eliminated new focal inflammatory activity, but resulted in early acceleration of brain atrophy.

OBJECTIVE: We modeled the time course of whole-brain volume in 19 patients to identify the baseline predictors of atrophy and to estimate the average rate of atrophy after IA/aHSCT.

METHODS: Percentage whole-brain volume changes were calculated between the baseline and follow-up magnetic resonance imaging (MRI; mean duration: 5 years). A mixed-effects model was applied using two predictors: total busulfan dose and baseline volume of T1-weighted white-matter lesions.

RESULTS: Treatment was followed by accelerated whole-brain volume loss averaging 3.3%. Both the busulfan dose and the baseline lesion volume were significant predictors. The atrophy slowed progressively over approximately 2.5 years. There was no evidence that resolution of edema contributed to volume loss. The mean rate of long-term atrophy was -0.23% per year, consistent with the rate expected from normal aging.

CONCLUSION: Following IA/aHSCT, MS patients showed accelerated whole-brain atrophy that was likely associated with treatment-related toxicity and degeneration of “committed” tissues. Atrophy eventually slowed to that expected from normal aging, suggesting that stopping inflammatory activity in MS can reduce secondary degeneration and atrophy.

Article 2

Arnold et al. Superior MRI outcomes with alemtuzumab compared with subcutaneous interferon β-1a in MS. Neurology. 2016 Oct 4;87(14):1464-1472.Neurology. 2016 Oct 4;87(14):1464-1472.

OBJECTIVE: To describe detailed MRI results from 2 head-to-head phase III trials, Comparison of Alemtuzumab and Rebif Efficacy in Multiple Sclerosis Study I (CARE-MS I; NCT00530348) and Study II (CARE-MS II; NCT00548405), of alemtuzumab vs subcutaneous interferon β-1a (SC IFN-β-1a) in patients with active relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS).

METHODS: The impact of alemtuzumab 12 mg vs SC IFN-β-1a 44 μg on MRI measures was evaluated in patients with RRMS who were treatment-naive (CARE-MS I) or who had an inadequate response, defined as at least one relapse, to prior therapy (CARE-MS II).

RESULTS: Both treatments prevented T2-hyperintense lesion volume increases from baseline. Alemtuzumab was more effective than SC IFN-β-1a on most lesion-based endpoints in both studies (p < 0.05), including decreased risk of new/enlarging T2 lesions over 2 years and gadolinium-enhancing lesions at year 2. Reduced risk of new T1 lesions (p < 0.0001) and gadolinium-enhancing lesion conversion to T1-hypointense black holes (p = 0.0078) were observed with alemtuzumab vs SC IFN-β-1a in CARE-MS II. Alemtuzumab slowed brain volume loss over 2 years in CARE-MS I (p < 0.0001) and II (p = 0.012) vs SC IFN-β-1a.

CONCLUSIONS: Alemtuzumab demonstrated greater efficacy than SC IFN-β-1a on MRI endpoints in active RRMS. The superiority of alemtuzumab was more prominent during the second year of both studies. These findings complement the superior clinical efficacy of alemtuzumab over SC IFN-β-1a in RRMS.

CLINICALTRIALSGOV IDENTIFIER: NCT00530348 and NCT00548405.

CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE: The results reported here provide Class I evidence that, for patients with active RRMS, alemtuzumab is superior to SC IFN-β-1a on multiple MRI endpoints.

Article 3

Vavasour et al. A 24-month advanced magnetic resonance imaging study of multiple sclerosis patients treated with alemtuzumab. Mult Scler. 2018 Apr 1:1352458518770085. doi: 10.1177/1352458518770085.

BACKGROUND: Tissue damage in both multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions and normal-appearing white matter (NAWM) are important contributors to disability and progression. Specific aspects of MS pathology can be measured using advanced imaging. Alemtuzumab is a humanised monoclonal antibody targeting CD52 developed for MS treatment.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate changes over 2 years of advanced magnetic resonance (MR) metrics in lesions and NAWM of MS patients treated with alemtuzumab.

METHODS: A total of 42 relapsing-remitting alemtuzumab-treated MS subjects were scanned for 2 years at 3 T. T1 relaxation, T2relaxation, diffusion tensor, MR spectroscopy and volumetric sequences were performed. Mean T1 and myelin water fraction (MWF) were determined for stable lesions, new lesions and NAWM. Fractional anisotropy was calculated for the corpus callosum (CC) and N-acetylaspartate (NAA) concentration was determined from a large NAWM voxel. Brain parenchymal fraction (BPF), cortical thickness and CC area were also calculated.

RESULTS: No change in any MR measurement was found in lesions or NAWM over 24 months. BPF, cortical thickness and CC area all showed decreases in the first year followed by stability in the second year.

CONCLUSION: Advanced MR biomarkers of myelin (MWF) and neuron/axons (NAA) show no change in NAWM over 24 months in alemtuzumab-treated MS participants.

CoI: multiple