Long‐term efficacy and safety of hetrombopag in paediatric patients with immune thrombocytopenia

Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an autoimmune disorder that occurs in children and adults, and it is characterized by a reduced platelet count. Hetrombopag, a novel thrombopoietin receptor agonist (TPO-RA) for second-line ITP treatment, lacks thorough efficacy and safety evaluation in paediatric patients. In this study, we assessed complete response (CR), response (R), overall response (OR), no response (NR), durable response (DR), relapse and treatment-free response (TFR) rates in 93 paediatric ITP patients who were treated with hetrombopag. The results demonstrated that the CR rate, R rate, OR rate, NR rate, DR rate, relapse rate and TFR rate were 61.3%, 15.1%, 76.3%, 23.7%, 76.1%, 26.8% and 52.1% respectively. Patients with newly diagnosed ITP exhibited a higher TFR rate than those with persistent or chronic ITP. Furthermore, among the nine patients who switched from other TPO-RAs, seven patients achieved OR during initial treatment, including three patients who achieved CR and four patients who achieved R. The overall incidence of adverse events was 37.6%, with no serious adverse events reported. Our findings highlight that hetrombopag is both safe and effective in paediatric patients and may serve as a viable option for patients for whom first-line therapy fails.