Conditions: Interstitial Pneumonitis Polymyositis Dermatomyositis
Keywords: Interstitial pneumonitis Polymyositis Dermatomyositis Tacrolimus Corticosteroids
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 25
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The purpose of the study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the combination treatment of tacrolimus and corticosteroid in polymyositis/dermatomyositis patients with interstitial pneumonitis with comparison against corticosteroid-treated historical controls.

Detailed description:
Interstitial pneumonia (IP) is a common complication of and has a significant impact on the prognosis of patients with polymyositis (PM) and dermatomyositis (DM). Reported prevalence of IP in PM/DM patients varies between 23 to 65% depending on criteria applied as well as on clinical settings of studied cohorts, and an earlier overview and a later study reported its high short-term mortality.

However, treatment for this grave complication has not yet been either established or even been prospectively investigated. Glucocorticoids, while long been considered as the first-line drugs, is effective in less than 50% of patients. Furthermore, the mortality of these glucocorticoids-resistant patients does not improve even if immunosuppressive drugs are later added.

Recently, we and others reported retrospective data which suggest that either an early addition of immunosuppressive drugs to glucocorticoids or the combined use of glucocorticoids and immunosuppressive drugs from the initial treatment may improve the survival of PM/DM patients. To save lives of PM/DM-IP patients, desperate treating physicians have started using this approach, strongly urging the conduct of prospective studies to investigate the superiority of this approach over glucocorticoids alone. At the same time, it was considered not ethically appropriate to conduct a prospective study with a concurrent controlled group receiving glucocorticoids alone given the presence of the PM/DM-IP subtype with rapidly progressive course and high short-term mortality if treated with glucocorticoids alone and the absence of useful demographic or bio-markers which could distinguish patients with this subtype early. Among immunosuppressive drugs used in the treatment of PM/DM-IP, tacrolimus has recently been suggested to be effective even for those patients who are resistant to cyclosporine or cyclosphosphamide.

To investigate whether the combined initial treatment of glucocorticoids and tacrolimus is superior to glucocorticoids alone in PM/DM-IP patients, we conducted a multicenter clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a combination treatment of glucocorticoids and tacrolimus for 1 year in patients with newly developed active PM/DM-IP or its relapse by comparing against clinical outcome of historical control patients who were treated with glucocorticoid alone as an initial treatment.

Arms:
arm 1: Tacrolimus treatment is to be initiated at the starting dose of 0.075mg/kg/day, adjusted to maintain its whole blood trough levels between 5 and 10 ng/mL for 52 weeks. All patients are to receive glucocorticoids with the starting doses equivalent to between 0.6 and 1.0 mg/kg/day of prednisolone which are to be continued for the first 28 days after which be subsequently tapered according to a predefined guideline. Up to two courses of pulse intravenous glucocorticoid therapy are allowed during that period.

Interventions: intervention 1: Tacrolimus
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Start at the standard starting dose of 0.075mg/kg/day divided into two doses, then adjust doses based on clinical response and tolerability, but maintain whole blood trough levels between 5 to 10 ng/mL and total daily doses equal to or below 0.3mg/kg.

Protocol document: