Cutaneous castleman's disease responds to anti-interleukin-6 treatment

Castleman's disease is uncommon, and cutaneous involvement is even rarer. We report a 42-year-old Asian woman with the multicentric plasma cell variant of Castleman's disease limited to her skin. The literature suggests that Castleman's disease is driven by interleukin-6 (IL-6). Based on these data, we hypothesized that suppression of IL-6 would have a salutary effect. Therefore, our patient was treated with CNT0328, a chimeric murine anti-human IL-6 antibody. She has shown a remarkable, ongoing response to this treatment, with almost complete clearing of her skin lesions after six doses.