Margarida Maia, PhD, science writer —

Low blood levels of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) are linked to more active disease and a higher risk of kidney failure in newly diagnosed ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV), a study finds. The findings point to GFAP as a potential blood biomarker to predict the course of AAV early and…

Combination maintenance therapy with Nucala (mepolizumab) and azathioprine may be more effective than either treatment alone at maintaining disease remission and reducing the need for glucocorticoids in people with severe eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA). These are the findings of a single-center study in Japan that support the use…

Tavneos (avacopan) effectively induces disease remission in adults with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) and diffuse alveolar hemorrhage (DAH), that is, bleeding from the small blood vessels in the lungs, according to a real-world study in the U.S. The therapy also let all patients reduce their dose of glucocorticoids, a…

Nearly one year of treatment with rituximab was superior to traditional immunosuppressive medications at helping people with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) achieve remission after a severe relapse, an analysis of data from a multicenter study in Japan has found. Such superiority was not observed at six months of treatment,…

The combination antibiotic trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) may help prevent serious infections for people with granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA) who are taking the immunosuppressant rituximab, a study of U.S. data shows. Preventive treatment, or prophylaxis, with TMP-SMX in people with this common type of ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) tended to…

Conduit Pharmaceuticals is planning to launch Phase 2a clinical trials to test its lead oral candidate AZD1656 in people with immune system disorders — specifically ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) as one indication. “With its potential to become a first-in-class therapy for autoimmune diseases, AZD1656 represents a significant leap forward…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given Nkarta the green light to launch a clinical trial testing its cell therapy candidate NKX019 in people with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) and other autoimmune disorders. The upcoming multicenter trial, dubbed Ntrust-2, is expected to initially recruit as many as…

Tavneos (avacopan) is better than the glucocorticoid prednisone at promoting disease remission, lowering relapse rates, and improving quality of life in ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) patients with active ear, nose, or throat (ENT) manifestations. That’s according to new subgroup analyses from the Phase 3 ADVOCATE clinical trial (NCT02994927).

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) — a chronic disease where the bowel becomes inflamed, causing recurring lower abdominal pain and diarrhea — can overlap with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) and is often diagnosed first, a study found. The finding suggests a possible link between the two diseases, and that having IBD…

About 1 in every 5 people with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV), at some point in life, may experience problems that keep the thyroid gland from making the right amount of hormones, with these problems most often developing within five years of an AAV diagnosis, a large study found. While…