2. Materials and Methods
thrombocytopenia
THROMBOCYTOPENIA, PRIMARY IMMUNE THROMBOCYTOPENIA
For this study, we included patients with primary immune thrombocytopenia who were refractory to treatment or in relapse, who were admitted to our hospital between July 2018 and December 2019, and who met the following inclusion criteria: (a) men or women aged older than 15 years, (b) a diagnosis of thrombocytopenia (platelet count < 100 × 10Patients who continuously received steroid treatment for at least 10 weeks without significant elevation in serum platelets were considered resistant to steroid treatment. Patients considered to have relapsed presented resistance to steroid treatment despite having a history of response in one or more prior episodes.All the patients included in this study continued with their base treatment (corticosteroids) accompanied by a second-line treatment (azathioprine or azathioprine/danazol).Clinical, physical, and biochemical evaluations were performed on all patients included in this study. Platelet counts were measured prior to study treatment and in the first, third, sixth, and twelfth months of treatment (if available).The patients included in this study received oral treatment of atorvastatin at a dose of 40 mg daily and N-acetyl cysteine at a dose of 400 mg every 8 h. The desired treatment duration was 12 months, but we included patients who completed at least 1 month of treatment in the analysis.The response to treatment was classified as follows: (a) a partial response, where the patient reached a platelet count above 30 × 10For data processing and the descriptive and inferential statistical analyses, we used the software IBM SPSS statistics (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA).We calculated the absolute and relative frequencies, which are presented as percentages and proportions, for the descriptive analysis of the qualitative variables. The quantitative variables were analyzed using their means, standard deviations, medians, and ranges. For the inferential analysis of the quantitative variables, the chi-square test was performed to make the comparison using a contingency table; for the inferential analysis of the quantitative variables, their normality in the Gaussian distribution was first assessed using the Shapiro–Wilk test, and then a comparison of nonpaired groups was performed with the Student’s This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara Fray Antonio Alcalde (R-179/19), and informed consent was obtained from each patient before any procedures were performed in this study. This trial is registered at clnicaltrails.gov under trial number NCT05551624.