Bill's pure dimethylfumarate thread

[Bill]

It has been a long while so I will give an update. The short of it is that I am taking twice daily DMF doses of 360 mg with food and suffer only a mildly upset stomach as a side effect. This dosage seems to be far more effective than the three 240 mg doses I was taking at the start. My PASI is now around 1, and still seems to be improving, albeit very slowly. My appreciation of the disease and treatment has also changed: I had intended to use the DMF in bursts and switch to topical therapies when the plaques had reduced and become inactive, but such an approach is flawed as psoriasis in a systemic illness. I found this out the hard way about a year ago when I ceased taking DMF altogether. Despite the topical treatment, the plaques returned with a vengeance, leaving me 15% covered with angry red plaques. I then upped the dose to three daily doses of 360 mg. This was effective but hard going so I skipped a few doses. The skipped doses in turn led to the realisation that two doses of 360 mg was controlling the disease and was far more effective than three daily doses of 240 mg. I take the DMF on week days and have a break from treatment on weekends.

On a regulatory note, DMF is now classified as a pharmaceutical in Australia for treating multiple sclerosis. Were I to buy it unsubsidised here it would cost me $40,000 per year, compared with the $40 per year it cost me for the DMF I bought from Shanghai. So I will be contacting the the local authority for permission to import more DMF. Fortunately the kilo I bought will last me at least until late in 2016, but as it is working so well I do not want to face a disrupted supply.