Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disease with the main symptom such as "muscle fatigue". It is a weakening of muscular strength due to repetitive gestures such as eyelid, facial and limb movements. Breathing itself is also burdensome. There may be over 10,000 people with this disease in Poland and in Lublin voivodeship around 1,000 citizens. So far, they have been treated mainly with steroids but that solution, however, causes side effects: high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity. Despite this, the ailment kept coming back or the patient did not get full recovery. Lublin neurologists in the fight against this disease decided to use a substance used in medicine for 30-40 years, mainly in the treatment of leukemia and multiple sclerosis. Professor Konrad Rejdak with his team, decided to give cladribine to several patients - a pilot open‐label study.
It turned out that this medicine has a chance to suppress the activity of autoreactive lymphocytes, leading to their utter elimination, and sucessfully giving the chance to their reconstruction in a new form. Owing to this, the newly created cells will no longer have harmful influence. All this seems to be a safe and effective emergency therapy in a population of patients with refractory MG - explains the author of the idea.
The discovery of doctors from the Department of Neurology, Medical University of Lublin at Clinical Hospital No. 4 in Lublin has been published in a prestigious scientific journal "European Journal of Neurology". The project is also a shared work of doctors: Sebastian Szklener and Dariusz Baranowski. Lublin's neurologists want to continue working on their discovery. Hence, they have applied for a grant from the Medical Research Agency to obtain funds for the third phase of research. It may be a milestone in the treatment of myasthenia gravis.
