:) Does anyone know anything about ALLEVIATE trials. The drug is called epratuzumab and a friend of mine said they had good results with it.

Hi! You might want to check out this website if you haven't already. I have never heard of it, so I googled it. There are a lot of sites, but this one in particular mentioned the treatment in Lupus patients. Hope this helps.

http://www.immunomedics.com/news_pdf/2005_PDF/PR01052004.pdf

thank you for that link ill take a look at it.

This drug looks like another type of monoclonal antibody relating to B-lymphocytes. There are other clinical trials of similar drugs going on too - "Lymphostat-B" and "AMG 623". My doc is doing all three clinical trials, I think. You can find the locations of the trials at Lupus Foundation of America's website (if I recall). I believe the studies are showing a repression of lupus flare activity. Most are at the stage III or stage IV level of trials where they are testing dosages for tolerances at different levels. They to my knowledge all are given by IV, and the trials are very slow and time consuming - like 10 hour days of IV doses followed by bloodwork at 2 hour, 4 hour and 8 hour intervals. So these are tricky drugs to get through trials with. They do not allow patients taking more than 10mg Prednisone a day - for the moderate lupus subgroup of patients. Some or all of these drugs have been approved for fast-tracking by the FDA, according to their websites.

I've been looking at them a lot because I was invited to start the phase IV clinical trial in August for AMG 623. Not sure I can do it because of the time commitment, but if I do it, I will keep the board posted on my personal experience with it and whatever results I can get out of my doctor running the trial.

Please let us know if you learn more! Thanks.

Jennifer