[Split From] Stelara round two

[D Foster]

I have had a quick look at the two threads and I must look at this closer , it's very complex all the information but to me it seems that there is an awful lot they still do not know about it. I will look at it further because I find it rather fascinating and reserve my opinion till a later date. I find it a little bit peculiar to buy a kilo of the stuff to sprinkle it on my cornflakes with no monitoring in place to check on things .

In an earlier reaction I already said that there is a careful protocol of monitoring in place. Certainly during the build up phase. As this is a non-Big-Pharma product, the doctors that have developed it are very careful not to get problems with it. Perhaps even over careful. So the monitoring is maybe even better than it is in normal circumstances. Even now, after years of using I am checked every half year. 30 years of experience have learnt that most important are the lymphocytes and liver and kidney functions. In these years over thousands of patients, there have been two problems. One kidney problem, in fact caused by something else but became more critical by the DMF, and one PML case where obviously the protocol was not followed, lympho's became too low, no checks were done and the treatment was not stopped.

So to my idea there is nothing peculiar.

Does our friend in OZ get checked after sprinkling on his food, if it's checked and looked after then fine and if it works then great.
There are a great many drugs that I would not take unless I really had to and MTX is one of them however sometimes you do not have a choice.