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This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Rights and Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Steis, R. G. Articles by Ewel, C. H. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Steis, R. G. Articles by Ewel, C. H. Social Bookmarking                   What's this?  Previous Article  |  Table of Contents  |  Next Article  Loss of interferon antibodies during prolonged continuous interferon- alpha 2a therapy in hairy cell leukemia RG Steis, JW Smith , WJ Urba, DJ Venzon, DL Longo, R Barney, LM Evans, LM Itri and CH Ewel Biological Response Modifiers Program, National Cancer Institute- Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, MD 21701. Although highly active in hairy cell leukemia (HCL), interferons (IFN) are not curative in this disease; current data indicate that prolonged IFN therapy will be necessary to control disease in the majority of patients. We previously observed acquired IFN resistance in association with neutralizing IFN-alpha 2a antibodies in small numbers of patients with HCL. This finding suggests that the requisite long-term therapy may be compromised if there is an increasing incidence over time of neutralizing antibodies. We performed a follow-up study of IFN antibodies in our patients receiving continuous IFN therapy. All 16 patients who were previously antibody negative remained so. Surprisingly, all nine patients who previously had non-neutralizing IFN antibodies became antibody negative after a median of 14.5 months. Moreover, 3 of 10 patients who had neutralizing antibodies became antibody negative and five had only non-neutralizing antibodies a median of 10 months from the time neutralizing antibody had first been detected. Only two patients had persisting neutralizing antibodies. Inhibition of neopterin synthesis, inhibition of generation of 2', 5' oligoadenylate synthetase activity, and inability to detect IFN in serum after subcutaneous injection of IFN-alpha 2a was observed only in the one patient tested with neutralizing IFN antibodies confirming that these antibodies have functional significance in vivo. We conclude that, although neutralizing IFN antibodies inhibit the effectiveness of IFN in vivo, these antibodies are produced only transiently during long- term therapy. The long-term effectiveness of this drug will not likely be affected in most patients by neutralizing antibody. Volume 77, Issue 4, pp. 792-798, 02/15/1991 Copyright © 1991 by The American Society of Hematology CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this? This article has been cited by other articles: M. Rosenberg, W. Kingma, M. A. Fitzpatrick, and S. M. Richards Immunosurveillance of Alglucerase Enzyme Therapy for Gaucher Patients: Induction of Humoral Tolerance in Seroconverted Patients After Repeat Administration Blood, March 15, 1999; 93(6): 2081 - 2088. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

	Copyright © 1991 by American Society of Hematology         Online ISSN: 1528-0020