ArticleArthritis research & therapy2009
Class-switched B cells display response to therapeutic B-cell depletion in rheumatoid arthritis.
Article in Arthritis research & therapy, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
- Lymphocytes as Biomarkers of Therapeutic Response in Rheumatic Autoimmune Diseases, Is It a Realistic Goal?Clinical reviews in allergy & immunology · 2017Pooled it
- Pathogenic Drivers of Difficult-to-Treat Rheumatoid Arthritis: Synovium and Beyond.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Immune-cell profiling to guide stratification and treatment of patients with rheumatic diseases.Nature reviews. Rheumatology · 2025Review
- Advances in the treatment of ANCA-associated vasculitis.Nature reviews. Rheumatology · 2025Review
- Regulatory B Cell Therapy in Kidney Transplantation.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2021Review
- Dependence on Autophagy for Autoreactive Memory B Cells in the Development of Pristane-Induced Lupus.Frontiers in immunology · 2021Article
- Effects of rituximab therapy on B cell differentiation and depletion.Clinical rheumatology · 2020Review
- Elucidating the Pivotal Immunomodulatory and Anti-Inflammatory Potentials of Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine.Journal of immunology research · 2020Review
- High efficacy of rituximab for myasthenia gravis: a comprehensive nationwide study in Austria.Journal of neurology · 2019Article
- Antibody repertoire analysis in polygenic autoimmune diseases.Immunology · 2018Review
- Immune cell subset differentiation and tissue inflammation.Journal of hematology & oncology · 2018Review
- B cell phenotypes in patients with rheumatoid arthritis relapsing after rituximab: expression of B cell-activating factor-binding receptors on B cell subsets.Clinical and experimental immunology · 2017Article
- Right drug, right patient, right time: aspiration or future promise for biologics in rheumatoid arthritis?Arthritis research & therapy · 2017Review
- Memory B Cells and Response to Abatacept in Rheumatoid Arthritis.Clinical reviews in allergy & immunology · 2017Article
- Targeting B cells in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis: from pathophysiology to optimal clinical management.Therapeutic advances in neurological disorders · 2017Review
- B-cell imaging with zirconium-89 labelled rituximab PET-CT at baseline is associated with therapeutic response 24 weeks after initiation of rituximab treatment in rheumatoid arthritis patients.Arthritis research & therapy · 2016Article
- Beyond pan-B-cell-directed therapy - new avenues and insights into the pathogenesis of SLE.Nature reviews. Rheumatology · 2016Review
- Predictive factors of response to biological disease modifying antirheumatic drugs: towards personalized medicine.Mediators of inflammation · 2014Review
- Rituximab for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: an update.Drug design, development and therapy · 2013Review
- Rheumatoid factor B cell memory leads to rapid, switched antibody-forming cell responses.Journal of immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950) · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionReconstitution of peripheral blood (PB) B cells after therapeutic depletion with the chimeric anti-CD20 antibody rituximab (RTX) mimics lymphatic ontogeny. In this situation, the repletion kinetics and migratory properties of distinct developmental B-cell stages and their correlation to disease activity might facilitate our understanding of innate and adaptive B-cell functions in rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
methodsThirty-five 'RTX-naïve' RA patients with active arthritis were treated after failure of tumour necrosis factor blockade in an open-label study with two infusions of 1,000 mg RTX. Prednisone dose was tapered according to clinical improvement from a median of 10 mg at baseline to 5 mg at 9 and 12 months. Conventional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs were kept stable. Subsets of CD19+ B cells were assessed by flow cytometry according to their IgD and CD27 surface expression. Their absolute number and relative frequency in PB were followed every 3 months and were determined in parallel in synovial tissue (n = 3) or synovial fluid (n = 3) in the case of florid arthritis.
resultsSix of 35 patients fulfilled the European League Against Rheumatism criteria for moderate clinical response, and 19 others for good clinical response. All PB B-cell fractions decreased significantly in number (P < 0.001) after the first infusion. Disease activity developed independently of the total B-cell number. B-cell repopulation was dominated in quantity by CD27-IgD+ 'naïve' B cells. The low number of CD27+IgD- class-switched memory B cells (MemB) in the blood, together with sustained reduction of rheumatoid factor serum concentrations, correlated with good clinical response. Class-switched MemB were found accumulated in flaring joints.
conclusionsThe present data support the hypothesis that control of adaptive immune processes involving germinal centre-derived, antigen, and T-cell-dependently matured B cells is essential for successful RTX treatment.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.