Posted on 01/09/2008 2:14:21 PM PST by blam
Wow. Thanks for the ping.
I just checked out the article, but couldn’t find the commentary on it listed there. It’s not intrathecal but rather extrathecal hoping for delivery via paraspinal vessels. And it uses the standard 25 mg weekly dose schedule so would cost the same as RA treatment plus some charge for the skilled person required to inject it that way weekly. Drug costs ~$15k/year still might be paid for if it kept patients out of nursing homes. Sounds like a great excuse for further studies to optimize the dosing and results and also to compare other routes of delivery (does it have to be paraspinal or would subcutaneous also work) and the other TNF blockers. And also to collect data on the possible risk of demyelinating disorders from this usage.
At $900 a dose it’s still cheaper than assisted living which can run in the thousands per month....
sw
Printing and taking to work with me tomorrow.
May or may not be of help to some of our patients but hope is hope.
Makes me want to cry, this article published on what would have been my mother’s 93rd birthday. She spent the last 25 years of her life in a mental muddle that required her to live in a locked facility. Not a nice way to live or to die.
And yet, she had her moments of clarity — not many, but it was as though she had a veil over her brain. When the light shone in, the old humor, wit, personality, intelligence and memory seemed intact. For maybe two minutes. Then the light in her eyes would die, the words turned into incomprehensible mutterings and she’d shuffle away.
I really hope they’ve nailed a cure. No one should have to go through this.
The difference is that these actually exist now, and must make their way through clinical trials, which takes years.
So instead of academics saying "in 5 - 10 years we should have something", it's biotechs saying "we have something *now*, and we should be done with trials and development in 5 years."
“A drop in the bucket compared to what we give countries that hate our guts.”
_____________________
Sigh....so true, Fishhawk.
You sound like me to a “T”.
I also tear up at pictures of Reagan. From all I have read, he was a decent, caring man who unanbashedly fought the evils of communism. I believe God used RR as His agent(along with Maggie Thatcher and Pope John Paul VI) to put the final nail in the Soviet Union and to bring freedom to hundreds of millions of people. RR was a man of tremendous personal courage.
I well remember living through Jimmy Carter and the Reagan years—like night and day. I always felt safe when RR was on duty, in spite of the vicious press he got.
To this day, I have no use for the MSM. They do the same things to President Bush.
I often wonder what the 1990s would have been like with a sharp RR scolding Bill Clinton for his errant ways. Bildo would have been a one termer for sure.
Isn’t that what it already is?
Excellent.
Cheaper than a nursing home.
The good news is that it can be prescribed "off-label" as long as the patient and doctor realize they're playing games with the patient's life. The downside is that you can die if you don't get it right. And animal models are only partly accurate in adjusting dosage. You want to get every possible avenue as close as possible before you start - there's no other phrase for it - experimenting on patients. You can imagine the immense medical ethics issues involved here.
It will cut into a lot peoples' business'.
Yeah, I’ve been taking it since 2001. But I didn’t get the impression from the article that the same dosing schedule would be followed for this use.
Got me thinking, though-—folks here who take Enbrel might respond with their thoughts. I still have some residual pain that can get quite bad. Finally the docs called it nerve pain and have treated it as such with some success.
Since this spinal injection treats neuroinflammation, it got me thinking about ways it might help with other nerve conditions.
I think there’s no question this would be cheaper than nursing home care. The drug is already approved for RA and psoriatic arthritis, JRA and maybe some other stuff. Plus many doctors will prescribe it for other rheumatic diseases if DMARDs, etc. fail.
Seems it would be easy to extend use to this. Plus, it can be given to people at the first signs of dementia, I would think.
The article made it sound as though the effect might be pretty durable.
Seems like this would become a “procedure” you go to a special center to have done, like getting an MRI or something.
One doc prescribes it, the specialist does the spinal infusion.
All I can tell you is Enbrel is a miracle drug for the people for whom it works (not everyone benefits, of course).
I know people who were in a wheelchair for many years and now walk after taking Enbrel!
No, I wouldn’t guess a spinal twice a week would be too likely but you never know. You ever have any injection site issues?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.