Increased Awareness of Secondary B Cell Deficiency.
Wed Dec. 28th 2022
Collaborative work between NZ, Canadian and USA
specialists has resulted in an interesting, newly published
paper reviewing acquired B-Cell deficiency secondary to
B-Cell depleting therapies.
Key Points
• B-cell depleting therapy is increasingly used across many clinical settings and specialties.
• With B-cell depleting therapy there comes the risk of hypogammaglobulinaemia, failure of B-cell recovery and function as well as increased risk of infections – indicating secondary B-cell deficiency.
• Unfortunately, despite the long and established use of Rituximab, the true prevalence of secondary B-cell deficiency remains unknown.
• The underlying disease, use of other immune modulating agents and other clinical factors may modulate the outcome of B-cell depleting therapy. • In some cases, B-cell depleting therapies can unmask underlying primary immune deficiency.
• This review aims to increase awareness of secondary B-cell deficiency in these patients, and encourages development of a harmonized approach for monitoring patients across multiple clinical specialties, with baseline and serial immune monitoring, along with clinical evaluation to identify patients that may be at risk of recurrent infections and other complications.
This is available online and makes interesting reading: