Has anyone heard of this? Tried it? My husbands supervisor told him of this as his wife has done it since she suffers from MS. According to him, it is approved for RA but not MS by the insurance. It is extremely expensive to do and he paid for it out of pocket.
I did some internet research on it and ooooo I'm iffy. I have heard that it came out before biologics.
It is called Prosorba Column. My RD was going to try it on me if the Rituxan didn't work. But 2 patients in his practise have gotten bad infections and he has decided not to do the procedure any longer.
I have read about it extensively and I was prepared to be sick for about 4 to 6 weeks to get relief. But at this point I don't want to do it. My Rhuemy is great and is aggressive witih treatment, so I really trust his advice on this issue.
On the main page of this board under TREATMENTS they have an article on Prosorba Column and I was able to find a lot of info on the web. Good luck.
Crispy
There was someone about a year ago whose sister (an RN) keep a running log of of the treatment and how it was going. It did help her brother in the end - but it was a tough process.
I don't get why it is dangerous - if loads of people have all their blood go thru a kidney machine without getting infected - why would the prosorba filter cause infection? Don't they know how to clean it? Gotta be more complex than that!
http://www.regence.com/trgmedpol/medicine/med05.html
When PE first became available during the 1970s and early 1980s, there was considerable interest and enthusiasm for the use of PP/PE for these autoimmune diseases. However, since that time, successive randomized controlled trials have not validated the role of PE as a treatment of the chronic phase of these conditions.
1983 Dwosh and colleagues reported on 26 patients with chronic randomized a crossover design to either true or sham PE. (5) The authors concluded that PP/PE did not have any clinical benefit despite impressive laboratory changes.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/308/19/1124
Twenty-six patients with (average age, 57 years; average duration of disease, 11 years) who were unresponsive to antiinflammatory and slow-acting antirheumatic drug therapy were entered into a controlled, double-blind, crossover study to assess the efficacy of therapy. All patients received 10 true and 10 sham aphereses as outpatients and continued to take their usual drugs. Twenty patients completed the study, and six were withdrawn--three because of poor venous access. Standard clinical and laboratory measures were assessed by personnel blinded to the therapy administered. Paired t-test analysis of seven clinical measures failed to show significant differences between the true and sham procedures (P = 0.36 to 0.96), although transient, mild improvement did occur during both cycles of apheresis, probably because of a placebo response. Significant reductions the erythrocyte-sedimentation rate, factor titer, and levels of hemoglobin, IgM, and C3 occurred only with true therapy (P = 0.001, 0.01, 0.03, 0.045, and 0.005, respectively). We conclude that does not have clinical benefit chronic , spite of impressive laboratory changes.