According to a story from raredr.com, The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently approved Hizentra as a maintenance therapy for patients with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy. Hizentra is a treatment of liquid subcutaneous immunoglobulin that was developed by CSL Behring. The therapy is meant to prevent relapses in neuromuscular impairment, a common effect of the disease.
Chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) is a genetically acquired inflammatory disorder that affects the peripheral nerves. This is an autoimmune disease in which the body’s own immune system begins to attack nerves, causing inflammation and damage to the myelin sheath. Like many rare diseases, CIDP is commonly under-diagnosed and under-treated and it can be difficult to distinguish the condition from other neurological disorders. Symptoms of the disorder include numbness, fatigue, tingling sensations, pain, loss of reflexes, and progressive muscle weakness.
Treatment for CIDP typically involves suppressing immune system activity. The disorder resembles multiple sclerosis in that it frequently appears as alternating relapse-remitting episodes of symptoms. If you would like to learn more about chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy, click here.
In clinical trials, Hizentra was shown to offer similar benefits to the current standard method of treating CIDP, intravenous immunoglobulin, but with far less side effects, meaning that the new treatment will offer a significant improvement in quality of life for patients. Hizentra was previously approved as a treatment for primary immunodeficiency. In the most recent trial that tested Hizentra’s effectiveness in the treating CIDP, 39% of patients who had received a low dose and 33% who had received a high dose experienced a relapse of symptoms compared to 63% rate of relapse in the placebo group.
