Original articleCase Report: Evidence for Transplacental Transfer of Maternally Administered Infliximab to the Newborn
Section snippets
Case Report
We describe the case of a 35-year-old 6-mercaptopurine–intolerant woman treated for refractory CD with maintenance infliximab before and during pregnancy. She had inflammatory CD involving her upper gastrointestinal tract, ileum, and colon. Her first 2 pregnancies were complicated by steroid-resistant flares of her disease, each time resulting in refractory preterm labor and in one case premature delivery. Her CD was then controlled with infliximab, which was initially administered with a
Discussion
We report the detection of an engineered therapeutic antibody in the offspring of a mother who received infliximab infusions during pregnancy. Because studies performed in pediatric CD have suggested that infliximab pharmacokinetics in children is similar to that seen in adults, with an expected half-life of about 8–9.5 days,6 one would expect infliximab levels at 6 weeks of age to be either very low or no longer detectable if placental transfer of infliximab were to have occurred. The presence
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Cited by (0)
- 1
Eric A. Vasiliauskas is on the Speaker’s Bureau of Centocor and Prometheus Laboratories.
- 2
Marla C. Dubinsky is a Consultant for Prometheus Laboratories.