• Inflammatory mediators
• 6-mercaptopurine
• intestinal T cells
• inflammatory mechanisms
• inflammatory bowel disease
• T lymphocytes
• inflammatory cells

I read with interest the study by Leiper and colleagues,1 and the authors should be commended for initiating this investigator-driven study. However, I beg to differ with the conclusion that reads ‘Rituximab has no significant effect on inducing remission in moderately active UC [ulcerative colitis] not responding to oral steroids.’

The authors state that the sample-size calculations were based on 80% power for excluding, at p<0.05, an 80% remission rate with active treatment compared with a predicted 25% placebo remission rate …