[Intravenous cyclophosphamide therapy in patients with steroid-resistant lupus nephritis]

We evaluated short term clinical effects of intravenous cyclophosphamide (iv CyP) therapy performed by every three month in 7 patients with steroid-resistant lupus nephritis. Significant improvements were observed in daily urinary protein excretion (3.1 to 0.83 g/day), creatinine clearance (65.4 to 95.3 ml/min), CH 50 levels (20.8 to 37.4 U/ml), and anti-DNA antibody titer (26.6 to 7.0 U/ml). In addition, the mean daily dose of prednisolone (PSL) could be markedly reduced from 38.6 mg to 13.9 mg at the final observation. Two patients suffered from Herpes Zoster infection at a few months after ivCyP therapy, however this incidence were not considered as critical side effect which reached to the discontinuation of this therapy. We concluded that ivCyP therapy by every three months were safety and achieved beneficial clinical effects on steroid-resistant lupus nephritis as far as short observation. On the contrary, the long term effect of this mode of therapy is to be defined.