Adjuvant Cytokine Therapy to Treat Pulmonary Mycobacterium Avium Complex Infection

Plain-language summary

Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) are ubiquitous organisms that cause isolated pulmonary disease in otherwise healthy patients with yet undefined susceptibilities. Patients typically present with a history of chronic cough, eventually progressing to hemoptysis, fever, and hypoxia. With half or more of all patients failing standard three-drug therapy, this is an insidious disease with a poor prognosis. Under the natural history protocol of nontuberculous mycobacterial infection (NTM; #01-I-0202), 46 patients with diagnosed pulmonary MAC disease are being studied. Numerous studies have suggested that a dysregulation in cytokine production may make these patients susceptible to mycobacterial infection. Cytokines are particularly important in the activaction of macrophages, which help to clear mycobacterial infection. Interferon gamma 1b (Actimmune) and GM-CSF (Leukine) are two cytokine therapies that have been approved in the treatment of chronic granulomatous disease and post-transplantation hematopoietic reconstitution, respectively. A number of in vitro studies suggest that either or both of these therapies may help to clear MAC infection. Given the poor outcomes of therapy and the persistent, debilitating nature of the disease, new therapies are desperately needed, and many are being tried without benefit of scientific foundation. Currently, there are no prospective trials that show any effect of these drugs in the lung delivered subcutaneously. This protocol proposes to perform a pilot study to evaluate the effects, if any, of these macrophage stimulating cytokines in the context of ongoing pulmonary MAC infection. Aims: To determine the local and systemic effect, if any, of adjuvant IFN gamma and GM-CSF in pulmonary MAC patients. Methods: Fifteen patients will be randomized into three treatment groups of five patients each. The first group will receive a standard drug regimen, based on the 1997 ATS guidelines. The second and third groups, in addition to receiving the standard therapy, will also receive three months of (IFN{gamma}) and GM-CSF, respectively. All patients will undergo bronchoscopy with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) at the beginning of the study, after three months, and at six months. In addition to obtaining traditional subjective and objective clinical measures, both proteomic and genomic analysis of the BAL will be performed to determine if cytokine therapy effects any detectable change in the lungs. In vitro studies on typ...

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