Thanks for sharing the results of this important study. Whilst I would definitely agree that we should be tapering off steroids to zero where possible after 6 months/remission has been achieved, this study has nothing to say about steroid usage in remission induction of GPA (so your title might be a little misleading). Some of these patients were 'relapsers' with up to 7 years of non-organ threatening disease, so perhaps that's why not all of them were on Rituximab. For some of them low dose steroid + DMARD may still carry a lower risk than maintenance Rituximab. One other note of caution - if a rheumatologist had a GPA patient they were worried about/frequent relapser they probably wouldn't have recruited them to this trial.
Thanks for sharing the results of this important study. Whilst I would definitely agree that we should be tapering off steroids to zero where possible after 6 months/remission has been achieved, this study has nothing to say about steroid usage in remission induction of GPA (so your title might be a little misleading). Some of these patients were 'relapsers' with up to 7 years of non-organ threatening disease, so perhaps that's why not all of them were on Rituximab. For some of them low dose steroid + DMARD may still carry a lower risk than maintenance Rituximab. One other note of caution - if a rheumatologist had a GPA patient they were worried about/frequent relapser they probably wouldn't have recruited them to this trial.