An FDA advisory panel is considering today if they will recommend Benlysta for FDA approval. You may want to do a quick search for up-to-date information. I read that there were some concerns that there were some side effects resulting in depression and suicide, but many of those involved in the trials were also taking antidepressants.
I hope that it’s approved and my wife gets a chance to try this.
If you get any additional information, please post it in the comments.
I haven’t really had much to say lately. However, I was curious about how many people are having the same kind of conversations about the new medication, Benlysta.
My wife’s lupus hasn’t been in remission since I’ve known her. I’m not sure that it’s ever been in remission, but we’ve been talking about what that would be like. How would it be? Would she be able to reduce the amount of pain medication she takes? If your lupus is in remission, does that mean that you will no longer be light sensitive?
Wellness is not something we’ve had to deal with in the last ten years. How would that change our daily routine? Would it change the tempo of our lives? Probably not. My wife does whatever she wants to do, regardless of her health. Would it change how we relate to each other? Probably not. I bring her coffee in the morning because I love her, not because she has a hard time getting up.
Maybe it would just be a matter of not having to worry so much all the time. That would be nice.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that Benlysta will be effective, or even approved by the FDA, so this thinking may be all pie in the sky, whatever that means. But it can’t hurt to be hopeful, right?
We’ve recently had our insurance stop covering a medication because it is now available over the counter. This seems to be happening more often. It doesn’t really make a huge difference, but it does end up costing us more for the same medication.
I’ve never really understood this concept. So a doctor prescribes a patient a particular kind of medication, let’s call it Loopie, just for fun.
So Loopie is a special medication that is available only by prescription and costs quite a bit of money. Thank goodness that the health insurance I pay for every month covers this very special drug, Loopie, and I only have to pay a fraction of the price to get it. Now, someone decides that Loopie isn’t quite so special anymore and they start selling the drug over the counter for a fraction of the price that my insurance company was paying for it before.
Yay! I think. Now, it will be much cheaper for my insurance to cover the cost of this great medication, Loopie OTC. However, the insurance company says, now that anyone can get Loopie, we don’t see why we should have to pay for it. Pay for it yourself.
Wait a minute, insurance company. If you were willing to pay the pharmaceutical company $200 for the month supply of Loopie you used to require me to pay $20 to pick up from the pharmacy, why is it that you aren’t willing to pay at least a portion of the $25 that I now have to pay for Loopie OTC?
Am I alone on this one?
Leflunomide (le-FLOO-noh-mide) is the new medicine that was recently prescribed at my wife’s recent visit to UCLA. Leflunomide or Arava is an arthritis medication and will help to reduce Jenny’s overall pain level, without having to increase her pain meds.
According to Sanofi-Aventis, the manufacturer:
Arava (leflunomide), a disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD), helps improve rheumatoid arthritis symptoms such as joint swelling and tenderness. But unlike many symptom relievers that only help relieve pain and swelling, Arava actually helps slow the progression of joint damage caused by rheumatoid arthritis. In addition, Arava is the only oral DMARD indicated to improve physical function.
It’s pretty exciting to think that a drug will not only take care of Jenny’s RA symptoms, but also help reduce the damage to her joints. We were told that it can actually heal joint damage that has already occurred, but that wasn’t mentioned in the blurb from the manufacturer, so I wonder about the accuracy of that claim. Regardless, Jenny’s been on it for a couple of weeks now and it does seem to be helping her joint pain, without producing any noticeable side-effects.
If you’ve had any experience with Arava, I’d be interested to hear what you thought.