siobhanfirestone
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Hi all, its appears a German Dr, Dr Habets who is an Oncologist, is undertaking a trial (or just randomly treating its very hard to tell) with Rituximab in Long COVID and Me/cfs patients who test positive for GCPR aabs via bioassay (ie not ELISA). Its REALLY hard to fully understand what is happening and as it seems to be a private clinic it feels very sus, but im wondering what peoples thoughts are. I dont even know if this will result in legitimate data being published?
Here is what i can find;
https://habets-aachen.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Stellungnahme-zu-Rituximab.pdf and his website is https://habets-aachen.com/
His basis seems to be two fold
1) retroactive studies showed GCPR patients are the ones who responded well in first trial
2) he doesnt think dose was enough in phase 3
His twitter posts (translated via google)
the trial/approach: Today we start with Rituximab therapy in patients with ME CFS and Post Covid. It takes a somewhat atypical form because we had severe side effects in one patient in the first two weeks after the first administration of 1400 mg. We will now divide it up, the therapy is carried out weekly with 350 mg subcutaneously for eight weeks. We then monitor the decrease in GPCR autoantibodies. If the decrease is sufficient, we continue the treatment as maintenance therapy every three months, initially for one year. Then further decision about continuing the therapy.
for dose he said: 1400 mg subcutaneously is equivalent to 1000 mg . This is the effective dose for autoimmune diseases.
in responce to fluge failing: The crucial error in the randomized Norwegian study times the maintenance therapy, which was limited to 500 mg In the small study it was 500 mg per square. We first have it tested at ERDE. The therapy controls with Elisa at IMD or biovis. We check beforehand whether there is activated EBV using EBV DNA PCR
If this is all being done privately and outside of a trial this feels like a huge amount of data going to waste tbh
Here is what i can find;
https://habets-aachen.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Stellungnahme-zu-Rituximab.pdf and his website is https://habets-aachen.com/
His basis seems to be two fold
1) retroactive studies showed GCPR patients are the ones who responded well in first trial
2) he doesnt think dose was enough in phase 3
His twitter posts (translated via google)
the trial/approach: Today we start with Rituximab therapy in patients with ME CFS and Post Covid. It takes a somewhat atypical form because we had severe side effects in one patient in the first two weeks after the first administration of 1400 mg. We will now divide it up, the therapy is carried out weekly with 350 mg subcutaneously for eight weeks. We then monitor the decrease in GPCR autoantibodies. If the decrease is sufficient, we continue the treatment as maintenance therapy every three months, initially for one year. Then further decision about continuing the therapy.
for dose he said: 1400 mg subcutaneously is equivalent to 1000 mg . This is the effective dose for autoimmune diseases.
in responce to fluge failing: The crucial error in the randomized Norwegian study times the maintenance therapy, which was limited to 500 mg In the small study it was 500 mg per square. We first have it tested at ERDE. The therapy controls with Elisa at IMD or biovis. We check beforehand whether there is activated EBV using EBV DNA PCR
If this is all being done privately and outside of a trial this feels like a huge amount of data going to waste tbh