A Case of Resistant Polymyositis That Was Successfully Treated with Tacrolimus

Yong Woo Ahn; Sungheon Song; Kyu Sig Hwang; Dae-Hyun Yoo; Na Rae Kim; Tae-Hwan Kim

doi:10.4078/jkra.2009.16.4.301

Journal List > J Korean Rheum Assoc > v.16(4) > 1003689

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Ahn, Song, Hwang, Yoo, Kim, and Kim: A Case of Resistant Polymyositis That Was Successfully Treated with Tacrolimus

Original Article

J Korean Rheum Assoc 2009;16(4):301-305.

Published online: 20 January 2009

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4078/jkra.2009.16.4.301

A Case of Resistant Polymyositis That Was Successfully Treated with Tacrolimus

Yong Woo Ahn¹, Sungheon Song¹, Kyu Sig Hwang¹, Dae-Hyun Yoo², Na Rae Kim³, Tae-Hwan Kim²

¹Department of Internal Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea

²The Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, College of Medicine, Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea

³Department of Pathology, Gachon Medical School, Incheon, Korea

Received 19 June 2009 Revised 1 August 2009 Accepted 10 August 2009

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Polymyositis is one form of inflammatory myopathy. In some patients, this disease does not entirely respond to conventional initial therapy with glucocorticoid, methotrexate and azathioprine. Multiple options exist for treating these patients, but only intravenous immune globulin has been subjected to a randomized clinical trial. We report here on a case of polymyositis that did not respond to multiple drug therapy, but it did respond to tacrolimus. After treatment with tacrolimus, the patient's disease has been well controlled for many years.

Keywords: Polymyositis, Tacrolimus, Inflammatory myopathy

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Fig. 1.

Minimal infiltration of inflammatory cells is found in the endomysial area (H&E stain, ×400).

Fig. 2.

The serum CK and LDH levels during treatments ∗PDS (tapering from 1 mg/kg/day),^†IVIG (400 mg/day for^∥Cyclosporine (100^§Methotrexate (10 mg/week),^‡Cyclophosphamide (50 mg/day), 5 consecutive days), mg/day),^¶Azathioprin (100 mg/day), ∗∗Infliximab (300 mg, 1 day),^††Tacrolimus (2 mg/day), ↓: IVIG.

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