Abstract # 3120 Tocilizumab uncouples the association between baseline and subsequent fatigue in allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant recipients

Publication date: February 2019Source: Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, Volume 76, SupplementAuthor(s): K.E. Giles, E.S. Costanzo, S. Singh, Z. Yin, A. Szabo, W.R. Drobyski, C.J. Hillard, J.D. Rizzo, A. D’Souza, C.L. Coe, J.M. KnightHistorically, sickness symptomatology in cancer patients has been studied as aggregated phenomena arising from a similar inflammatory etiology. A parent clinical trial analyzed depression, anxiety, fatigue, sleep, and pain as separate variables in hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) recipients experiencing cytokine blockade with an interleukin-6 receptor antagonist, tocilizumab. Contrary to initial hypotheses, tocilizumab recipients had worse post-HCT levels of depression, anxiety, pain, and sleep. Interestingly, we found that fatigue, as assessed by the Fatigue Symptom Inventory (FSI) administered at baseline and post-transplant days + 28 (D + 28), D + 100, and D + 180, was not similarly affected. Fatigue levels did not differ between the 25 patients who received one prophylactic dose of tocilizumab prior to allogeneic HCT and a historical control group of 63 HCT patients who did not receive tocilizumab. In addition, whereas fatigue scores pre- and post-HCT were correlated in control patients (0.54 at D + 28, p < 0.001; 0.39 at D + 100, p = 0.0033; 0.49 at D + 180, p = 0.0009), fatigue in tocilizumab recipients was not associated with baseline levels. Neither duration of fatigue, nor its interference wi...
Source: Brain, Behavior, and Immunity - Category: Neurology Source Type: research