An unexpected path led her to a tropical diseases doctor who had positive results with RA patients by using an unconventional treatment not supported by mainstream medicine at the time: He tested the patients blood for bacteria (by cultivation in a lab) and prescribed an antibiotic course that matched the detected bacteria. This treatment (testing + prescribing antibiotic)was repeated in regular intervals over the course of a whole year.
Her RA flare-ups stopped and recurred only in ever longer intervals which were arrested by this treatment. After a year the progression of the RA had stopped.
This treatment is controversial because it is considered bad practice to prescribe antibiotics liberally, for several good reasons. Mainstream medicine did not have a theoretical foundation to justify this treatment path.
The tropical disease doctor founded his treatment on the empirical research by some research factions that the “auto-immune” theory of RA was not showing the full picture.
This doesn't seem like prescribing antibiotics liberally to me? Having symptoms, test for bacterial infection, prescribe antibiotics seems reasonable to me with no medical training. I would consider liberal prescription to be something like prescribing antibiotics based on symptoms that align with viral infection, without doing any labs to determine the type of infection and hoping for the best.
Interesting. Can antibiotics be matched to that level of specific targeting?
Both groups observed significant decrease in disease activity score (DAS) (p < 0.001). Significantly higher decrease in pain in fasting group on seventh day (p = 0.049). No significant difference was observed in total fatty acid profile, butyrate and propionate but acetate increased significantly (p = 0.044) in fasting group and decreased significantly in MD group.
I was diagnosed in my 20s and at first it was a real atruggle to get out of bed. After initial rounds of steroids/TNF blockers, I really started to focus on strengthening my affected joints and it has quite literally been a miracle cure for me.
Nothing too crazy at first either, mine is in my feet so just lots of yoga and walking a couple miles or so a day did it for me.
So it's not easy to replicate exactly the protein done by another company, so what a biosimilar is, is an attempt at making proteins that have similar kind of folding and efficacy while not being strictly identical.
That's why they are not generics.
or do you mean cannot be made legally in the usa absurd copyright law where a company can simply deny licensing for medication?
because manufacturing is much more complex, depends on genetic modification of bacteria or things like that, and there are trade secrets involved in the manufacturing process - so you won't be able to replicate it even if you know the final structure.
Family member is on Remicade. It's administered in two doses (IV infusions) every 4 months, so 6 treatments/year. And retails for something like $12k/treatment. And many insurance companies have removed it from their list of preferred drugs due to the cost, leaving patients to fight for medically necessary treatment.
It's a fucking nightmare (as if RA on it's own isn't bad enough).
Doc replaced it with Azathioprine, a cheap generic, and I've had no major flare-ups of UC in 6 years.
If I have minor symptoms (usually triggered by certain foods), I also take mesalazine, but once I am in remission I can do without the mesalazine. If I withdraw from AZA when I am in remission, minor symptoms typically return after around 3 months, but subside after I resume taking the AZA for a couple of months. I can retain remission doing 3 months on, 3 months off.
Use of Azathioprine is still controversial for treatment of UC: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7034525/
I have no noticeable side-effects from taking Azathioprine.