Hi Cheryl-Anne, Yes, your email definitely helps me to understand things better. As you know that trial I am on, if successful, I should be off the medication at all. But my concern is to have a baby, so I am thinking, is it better for me to still remain on IFN? I wouldn't mind to stay on IFN just to be sure that something is maintaining my CML, even if undetectable... we all know that it still may be there... Let's say just to stay on some kind of low maintenance dosage to maintain PCRU? I would also love to lose some weight and I just pray every day that this trial will work for me and I can taste for a short or long term my weight back!!! Guys, I gained like 35 - 40 pounds. I went from a size 6 to size 12 - very depressing I tell you J I am only 29 and my whole female part of the family, including my 80 years old grandma, are sizes 2 - 8 max. I know that most of us are familiar with this problem and we shouldn't worry, but I can't help myself. It bothers me. I also hope that most of the people will do well on this combo and more CML people can it in the future. I think that it is great, of course maybe some people can't tolerate IFN, but for those who can, I think that it can be amazing approach to treatment, because then we can do Gleevec, Gleevec and IFN, IFN only, nothing - just waiting if CML comes back, and then if all these options do not work, we can look at other treatment options ... isn't it buying us some time? (hate to use this expression). Anyway, I can feel a little bit more water retention since I am on IFN and Gleevec and I am tired!! I already adjusted to "hurting myself feeling" J haha, because it was really hard to inject myself. Now, I am becoming a professional, there are no bruises anymore and the redness from the injection is also disappearing as I control it with Benadryl cream and I do not scratch myself like a dog J I am going to see my doc this Friday, so I will update you and the group what's going on. Livia
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Hi Livia, As Trey mentioned, they are essentially the same thing. Although I can tell you from personal experience with both IFN and IFN pegylated my side effects, that were very low with regular IFN, were even less with Pegylated IFN. I am not sure why that should be the case, there are theories, but then again those are just theories. However, the trial you are on is much different from the trial I posted about back in December. The trial I posted about from ASH was looking at using Pegylated IFN as a maintenance after stopping Gleevec. Interestingly, data continues to point to the usefulness of this strategy. Patients in Europe on this trial start therapy with both Gleevec and IFN. Once they achieve PCR U (undetectable) after a while they are "weaned" off of Gleevec. They continue on the pegylated IFN but in a very low controlled dose. Pegylated IFN is only injected sub cutaneously (under the skin) once a week or once every 10 days. Side effects usually start almost immediately after and last a day or two, then taper off. The nice part of this is that it gives you freedome from remembering taking pills everyday. Plus, I lost close to 15 lbs on this "diet" of IFN ;-) Meaning I didn't retain as much water as I do with TKI's. Anyway, the results from this trial show that you can maintain longterm responses to Gleevec and IFN with just low dose IFN. The important hypothetical next step would be can those patients be weaned off of IFN and achieve long term sustainable drug free remissions? Perhaps we shall see something like this in the future? We do know that pre Gleevec anywhere from 5 - 20% of patients on IFN therapy did achieve this type of remission. So, it isn't too hard to imagine. However, no one really knows exactly how IFN works, so it is hard to knwo for sure if the combo approach of Gleevec and IFN as was the case in this trial would help us achieve this potential. Hope this helps, Keep me posted on how you are doing ;-) Cheers, Cheryl-Anne On Apr 9, 9:26 am, livia klescova wrote: > Thank you Trey for the explanation. > > Trey wrote: > > Livia, > They are the same thing. Pegasys is a brand name for Pegylated > interferon-alpha-2b. Pegylated interferon-alpha-2b is simply a longer > lasting form of interferon-alpha-2b. The "PEG" in Pegylated stands > for polyethylene glycol (PEG), which is added to prolong the effects > of the interferon-alpha-2b so it only needs to be injected once a > week, rather than three times each week for conventional interferon- > alpha. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferon > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection > aroundhttp://mail.yahoo.com __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ [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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
