ISTH 2023 | Current unmet needs in ITP: impaired quality of life & chronic disorders

This will be discussed during the session because this relatively rare but important disorder has still a number of unmet medical needs. So there have been very great improvements in treatment, a widening of the therapeutic options available. But still there remains a fraction of patients which are refractory to treatments. And so the development of new treatments, of new possible targets of treatment is very important and there remains still a number of unmet needs in terms of quality of life of patients, because these patients not only bleed, which is their one of their main problems, but they also have a condition which worsens their quality of life. One of these manifestations which is not fully explained is fatigue. These patients have chronic fatigue and not always fatigue is improved by the therapy which improves the platelet number. So it’s an important point. And then we are now discovering that these patients are more prone to other disorders. So chronic disorders or chronic impairment of the quality of life like enhanced risk, paradoxically of thrombosis, it seems that there is an enhanced risk of cancer and it seems that there are data suggesting that there is an impairment, a cognitive impairment in the long-term. So there is a number of unmet clinical needs which really need to be addressed to improve the quality of life of these patients. And clinical research and basic research in this field is very important to attain these targets.