Therapeutic Window of Intravenous Immunoglobulin (IVIG) and its correlation with IVIG-resistant in Kawasaki Disease: a retrospective study

Objective: To investigate the optimal timing of initial intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) treat-ment in Kawasaki disease (KD) patients. Methods: KD patients were classified as the early group (day 1-4), conventional group (day 5-7), conventional group (day 8-10), and late group (after day 10). Differences among the groups were analyzed by ANOVA and Chi-square analysis. Predictors of IVIG resistance and the optimal cut-off value were determined by multiple logistic regression analyses and receiver operating character-istic (ROC) curve analysis. Results: There were no significant differences in IVIG resistance among the 4 groups (p = 0.335). The sensitivity analysis also confirmed no difference in the IVIG resistance between those who started the initial IVIG < day 7 of illness and those who received IVIG >day 7 of illness (p = 0.761). In addition, patients who received IVIG administration more than 7 days from the onset had a higher proportion of coronary artery abnormalities (p = 0.034) and longer length of hospitalization (p = 0.033) than those who started IVIG administration less than 7 days. The opti-mal cut-off value of initial IVIG administration time for predicting IVIG resistance was >7 days, with a sensitivity of 75.25% and specificity of 82.41%. Conclusions: IVIG therapy within 7 days of illness is found to be more effective for reducing the risk of coronary artery abnormalities than those who received IVIG >day 7 of illness. IVIG treat-ment within the 7 days of illness seems to be the optimal therapeutic window of IVIG. However, further prospective studies with long-term follow-up are required. (c) 2022 Sociedade Brasileira de Pediatria. Published by Elsevier Editora Ltda. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/).

Automated summary

This study investigated the optimal timing of initial intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) treatment in Kawasaki disease (KD) patients. It was found that IVIG therapy within 7 days of illness is more effective for reducing the risk of coronary artery abnormalities compared to treatment after 7 days.