Immune Thrombocytopenia Treatment

Idiopathic thrombocytopenia (ITP) has a long history. In 1025, Avicenna described in the Canon of Medicine a patient with characteristics of ITP, which became known as “idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura.” Splenectomy was the first effective treatment, beginning in 1916, achieving a complete response without recurrence in most patients.1 Glucocorticoids were introduced as therapy for the disease in 1949, and the term “idiopathic” became obsolete in 1950 when William Harrington, then a hematology fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, transfused blood into himself from a woman with the disease whose platelet count had not increased after splenectomy. Within hours, Harrington’s platelet . . .