Margarida Maia, PhD,  science writer—

A low dose of intravenous or into-the-vein methylprednisolone, a corticosteroid, is as safe and effective as a high dose at preserving kidney function and extending survival in people with severe ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV), a U.K. study found. Given that corticosteroids, a standard AAV treatment, are associated with significant…

A protein fragment called Ba that’s produced when the alternative complement pathway is activated is found at high levels in the urine of people with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) during a kidney flare, a small study suggests. This means it may serve as a biomarker for predicting and monitoring kidney-related…

AstraZeneca’s Fasenra (benralizumab) — approved for a rare type of asthma — does no worse than Nucala (mepolizumab) at keeping eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA) in remission. These are the first findings of the head-to-head Phase 3 MANDARA clinical trial (NCT04157348) that showed the study met its…

Microscopic polyangiitis (MPA) was the most common type of ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) among girls and Hispanic children in a California tertiary care hospital, a small study has found. While time to diagnosis was shorter, children with the disorder seemed to need more intensive care and dialysis, a treatment that…

An approach that removes specific antibodies from a person’s blood is better than a standard, more general blood-cleaning procedure called plasma exchange at clearing the self-reactive antibodies that drive ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV). That’s according to a small study in China that looked at data from AAV patients with severe…

People with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) often face a high medication burden — managing multiple medications, also known as polypharmacy — with most patients covered by Medicare on five or more treatments at the same time in the first year after their diagnosis, a study found. Among the factors…

Blood levels of globulins — a group of proteins that includes antibodies — when ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) is diagnosed can help in forecasting the risk of a patient dying of any cause, a large data study from Korea suggests. “The present study is the first to demonstrate that [total…

Treatment with Tavneos (avacopan) results in significant and clinically meaningful improvements in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) for people with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV), according to findings from the Phase 3 ADVOCATE clinical trial. “The ADVOCATE study is, to our knowledge, the first trial in patients with ANCA-associated vasculitis…

Dosing has begun in a Phase 2 clinical trial of imlifidase, an  antibody-cleaving therapy, in people with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) who have or are at risk of disease-associated acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), Hansa Biopharma, the therapy’s developer, announced. ARDS, a severe complication of AAV, occurs…

Developing pulmonary hypertension (PH), which occurs when pressure in the blood vessels that supply the lungs becomes too high, more than triples the mortality risk among people with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV), a study finds. PH may be relatively more common in AAV patients than understood, occurring in about…