Highlights from the breakout session: other forms of vasculitis

The session on other forms of vasculitis included a masterful review on IgG4-related disease (IgG4-RD) following which two research studies evaluating therapeutic agents and one study on histopathologic findings of IgG4-RD were presented. Peyronel F., et al. discussed the results of a prospective multicentre randomized clinical trial evaluating methotrexate for patients with retroperitoneal fibrosis. Methotrexate, in combination with a tapering regimen of glucocorticoids, was effective in inducing remission and allows use of lower cumulative prednisone doses. Hobbelink J., et al. evaluated the histopathologic scoring system from the ACR/EULAR Classification criteria for IgG4-RD. Their study found that these criteria were able to distinguish patients with confirmed and suspected IgG4-RD. Trivioli G et al. retrospectively evaluated rituximab in adult-onset IgA Vasculitis (IgAV) and crescentic IgA Nephropathy (cIgAN). Rituximab resulted in high rate of renal response in IgAV but remission rates in cIgAN remained lower with poorer renal outcomes compared with IgAV.