Recent Advances in Biological and Clinical Aspects of Paroxysmal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria

The unique feature of paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH), a chronic disease with severe hemolytic anemia, is the presence of a population of blood cells that, being deficient in surface proteins tethered to the membrane through a glycosylphosphatidylinositol molecule, are said to have the PNH phenotype. Therefore, the diagnosis of PNH is based on the demonstration that a substantial proportion of red cells and granulocytes have this phenotype. Diagnosis is currently best done by flow cytometry analysis, most appropriately by using anti-CD59 and anti-CD55 antibodies. Flow cytometry can also quantitate these cells and monitor their numbers as a function of time, thereby aiding clinical management. The most important advance in management has been the introduction of a human monoclonal antibody (eculizumab) that is directed against the C5 component of complement. Because hemolysis in PNH is mostly intravascular and complement dependent, periodic administration of anti-C5 produces complement blockade. This agent is the first to substantially reduce the rate of hemolysis in patients with PNH. Because very small PNH clones have been known for some years to exist in healthy people, it is clear that a crucial factor in causing PNH as a clinical disease is a marked expansion of the PNH clones themselves. Several lines of evidence from studies of mouse models and patients suggest that the process of expansion is probably the result of 2 phenomena: (1) damage to normal hematopoietic stem cells and (2) the sparing of PNH hematopoietic stem cells. This process of somatic cell selection may have an autoimmune basis, and the most likely agents are cells belonging to the natural killer-like subset of T-cells.