Risk taking in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: are the risks of haemopoietic stem cell transplantation acceptable?

Objectives: Autologous haemopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), which carries defined risks of early treatment-related mortality (TRM), has recently been proposed as an experimental therapy for severe rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The aim of this study was to establish whether the risks of this approach are acceptable to patients with RA and whether risk taking related to disease associated or personal/social parameters.Methods: A standard gamble questionnaire was used to determine the acceptable risk of mortality for a potentially curative procedure in patients with RA aged <70 yr. Additional data collected included age, sex, duration of RA, number of second-line agents, domestic and workforce information, and self-assessed disability.Results: The 53 patients (age range 24-69 yr, 39 female, 14 male, disease duration 2-43 yr) interviewed were prepared to accept a broad range of treatment-related mortality in order to be returned to normality off all drugs (median 5%, range 0-50%). Risk taking was significantly related to degree of disability measured by the disability section of the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ; P = 0.001) and negatively related to age (P = 0.04), although only HAQ score maintained significance on multivariate analysis. Using linear regression, we were able to determine that current TRM of autologous HSCT in Australia (3.3%) would be acceptable to patients with HAQ scores of <0.44 (84% of our sample), but allogeneic HSCT (with a TRM of 13.1%) would be acceptable only to severely disabled patients with HAQ scores of >2.45 (4% of our sample), assuming the procedure to be curative.Conclusion: Along with previous studies, these results suggest that, if long-term efficacy can be proven, then the risks of autografting may be acceptable to most patients with RA, particularly those with significant disability.Key words: Rheumatoid arthritis, Bone marrow transplantation, Stem cell transplantation, Autoimmune diseases.