Actually Trey, This year at ASH there was lots of renewed interest in low dose interferon and using it in combination with other drugs.
There is also new work on the fact that Peg IFN seems to lessen the side effects. Anyway, some of the biggest names in CML were quite interested and vowed to study it closer. It still is quite a mystery how it seems to work, but in fact between 5 - 20% patients on IFN were eventually able to go off of the drug and have continued to remain symptom free, drug free and "undetectable" for quite a long time. When you consider that the prevalence of this disease is rapidly increasing (which of course is a good thing) trying to get more patients into a long term drug free remission might be one way to manage the costs. Dr. Talpaz mentioned that if things continue they way they are now (and there is no reason to think they won't) the amount of patients living with CML will exponentially increase. With the cost of these drugs, this will put a significant strain on insurance, and socialized medical systems everywhere. Hopefully drug prices will drop (but lets not hold our breath on that one...). While this is a nice problem to have, it still is a problem. Cheers, Cheryl-Anne On Feb 10, 10:47 am, Trey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The IRIS Study has shown that Gleevec is far superior to the previous > drugs. Even if people initially responded to Interferon, Ara-C, and > Hydroxyurea, these responses were not as deep and durable as with > Gleevec, so long term survival rates were poor when compared to the > 95% overall survival rate for Gleevec. Besides the lack of long term > benefit, many people could not tolerate the side effects from those > drugs. Hydroxyurea is still used for some at initial diagnosis when > WBC counts are extremely high to gain a rapid reduction in leukemia > cells, but then Gleevec is used soon after that. There are a few who > beat the odds on earlier drug therapy, but they were rare cases, and > their quality of life was often poor. > > http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071210094338.htm --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ [CMLHope] A support group of http://cmlhope.com ------------------------------------------------- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CMLHope" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/CMLHope -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
