SynthesisClinical rheumatology2021
Efficacy and safety of rituximab therapy in patients with systemic sclerosis disease (SSc): systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Clinical rheumatology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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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
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 36 citations in OpenAlex.
- Efficacy and safety of rituximab therapy in patients with systemic sclerosis disease (SSc): systematic review and meta-analysis.Clinical rheumatology · 2021Pooled it
- Review
- CAR-T cell therapy in rheumatic diseases: a review article.Clinical rheumatology · 2026Review
- Article
- Persistent hypogammaglobulinemia after rituximab therapy in pediatric patients, prevalence and clinical outcomes.Clinical immunology communications · 2025Article
- Rituximab retention rate in systemic sclerosis: a long term real-life multicentre study.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Cancer in connective tissue disease.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Review
- Long-term outcome of autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation in patients with systemic sclerosis: a comparison with patients treated with rituximab and with traditional immunosuppressive agents.Arthritis research & therapy · 2024Article
- Biomarkers reflecting the pathogenesis, clinical manifestations, and guide therapeutic approach in systemic sclerosis: a narrative review.Clinical rheumatology · 2024Review
- The Use of "Acellbia"-A Biosimilar of Rituximab in Systemic Sclerosis.Doklady. Biochemistry and biophysics · 2024Article
- Safety and Tolerability of Rituximab in the Treatment of Systemic Sclerosis.Doklady. Biochemistry and biophysics · 2024Article
- Anti-topoisomerase 1 Antibody Level Changes after B Cell Depletion Therapy in Systemic Sclerosis.Doklady. Biochemistry and biophysics · 2023Article
- Chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy for the treatment of systemic rheumatic diseases: a comprehensive review of recent literature.Annals of medicine and surgery (2012) · 2023Article
- More to B: the growing evidence to inform targeting B cells in scleroderma.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- Patient preferences for the treatment of systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease: a discrete choice experiment.Rheumatology (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- New Era in Systemic Sclerosis Treatment: Recently Approved Therapeutics.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Review
- Current advances in the treatment of systemic sclerosis.Current opinion in pharmacology · 2022Review
- [Biologics for connective tissue diseases and vasculitides].Der Internist · 2022Review
- Increased expression of the ectoenzyme CD38 in peripheral blood plasmablasts and plasma cells of patients with systemic sclerosis.Frontiers in immunology · 2022Article
- State of the art and future directions in assessing the quality of life in rare and complex connective tissue and musculoskeletal diseases.Frontiers in medicine · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The clinical benefits of rituximab in systemic sclerosis (SSc) are still contentious. The present meta-analysis aimed to systematically assess rituximab's safety and efficacy profile in SSc patients. A systematic online query was performed in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Embase. The studies on the application of rituximab for patients with SSc were reviewed comprehensively for over two years. In terms of efficacy profile, mRSS, MS, LVEF, sPAP, FVC, DLCO, TLC, FEV, DAS, severity activity, HAQ-DI and SF36 were assessed for organ involvement and quality of life. The level of biological and immunological markers was also evaluated in SSc patients treated with RTX. In total, 24 studies met the criteria. Although they did not have a high quality, they were free from heterogeneity and publication bias. The pooled results revealed a long-term improvement in mRSS and MS. HAQ-DI was improved to 0.78 after 12 months, and DAS was significantly reduced to 0.33, 0.23, and 0.24 following 6, 12, and 24 months of treatment, respectively (p = 0.00 for both parameters). The rest of the parameters remained stable over time in patients with SSc. The pooled analysis of these patients demonstrated that the induction of death, cancer, infection, and infusion were 9, 5, 18 and 10%, respectively. Based on the pooled results of this meta-analysis, rituximab improves skin score and disease indices and stabilizes organ involvement in SSc patients. Rituximab seems to possess reasonable safety, similar to previous data from other autoimmune diseases.
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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.