It's difficult to know when to start tapering off steroids for patients with takayasu arteritis, but novel biomarkers discovered in India could help guide the decision
It’s difficult to know when to start tapering off high-dose steroids for patients with takayasu arteritis, but novel biomarkers discovered in India could help guide the decision.
Professor Debashish Danda, a rheumatologist at Christian Medical College Vellore in India, spoke about his research with Rheumatology Republic reporter Felicity Nelson at APLAR-ARA 2019 in Brisbane.
“In takayasu there is really a pausity of biomarkers,” he says. “Many patients leave the takayasu specialist without treatment because, except for asymmetry of pulse and blood pressure, they don’t find anything.
“So, they consider the patient is not having any disease activity until they turn up with some stroke, renal failure or blindness. Therefore, we need to have good biomarkers.”
