Rheumatoid arthritisThe Effect of Infliximab and Timing of Vaccination on the Humoral Response to Influenza Vaccination in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Ankylosing Spondylitis
Section snippets
Subjects
Forty-three consecutive outpatients routinely treated at our department of rheumatology who fulfilled the American College of Rheumatology criteria for RA (9), 18 patients with AS according to the modified New York criteria (10), and 17 healthy hospital personnel matched for age and gender to the RA group participated in the study. Twenty of the 43 RA patients and 18 AS patients had been treated with infliximab at a dosage of 3 mg/kg, for more than 6 months, every 6 to 8 weeks. The remaining 23
Characteristics of Patients and Control Subjects
The RA groups and healthy controls were statistically similar in age and gender and comprised mostly women (Table 1), while AS patients were younger and mostly men. The mean disease duration was 22 years for the RA-infliximab treated patients, 17 years for the RA control group, and 16 years for the AS group. At the time of vaccination, all RA patients were being treated with at least 1 DMARD (Table 2). Eighty-two percent of the noninfliximab RA subjects and 85% of the infliximab RA subjects
Discussion
The current study demonstrated that vaccination against influenza generated a satisfactory humoral response for the 3 antigens tested in RA and AS, including patients treated with infliximab. When the timing of vaccination was studied, a trend toward lower immunity was observed in RA patients vaccinated 3 weeks after the infusion of infliximab as compared with those vaccinated on the day of infliximab treatment. The humoral response was not affected by the different clinical and demographic
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