Kathy in IL - Remicade half-life

[Guest guest]

Kathy,

In simple, general terms, when I say " half-life, " I mean the length of

time a significant amount of the substance is going to hang around in

your body. More precisely, " biologic half-life " is defined as:

" the time required for one-half of an amount of a substance to be lost

through biologic processes " (Stedman's Medical Dictionary, 27th edition,

2000)

The half-life of Remicade is thought to be an average of about 10 days.

Compare that to Enbrel which has a half-life of approximately 115 hours.

It's a dramatic difference.

Intuitively, you can understand the half-life concept when you consider

that most people using Enbrel give themselves injections two times a

week, but a Remicade infusion is only received once about every eight

weeks.

I can't really say whether the infusions of Remicade you had in May had

anything to do with the infections you developed in August or later. By

August, you shouldn't have had a lot left in your system, but I have

read reports that have stated that it can take up to six months for

Remicade to become undetectable in your serum (but even then, how much

are we really talking about?). Were you taking any other

immunosuppressive drugs at the time - prednisone?

In Debs' case, her complications were probably not the result of the

Remicade entirely. But receiving the infusion just eight days after a

surgery for which recovery wasn't going particularly well did not help

at all. The decision to allow the infusion was not prudent, especially

since in those first few days after the infusion the serum concentration

of Remicade would be at its highest.

So, there really isn't anything inherently wrong with Remicade (or

Enbrel or MTX or prednisone), but you and your medical team have to be

careful about how these treatments are used. You can't let your disease

go uncontrolled either. As we know, that also can have very serious

consequences.

Re: [ ] Just talked w/Ron about Deb

> In a message dated 12/10/02 12:00:52 PM Central Standard Time,

> Matsumura_Clan@... writes:

>

>

> > I agree that we all have to be careful with Remicade. Since it has

such

> > a long half-life

>

> what do you mean by this gina. i know i had a mass of infections after

my

> surgeries. i had my infusions in may and my surgeries were in august

and

> october. i had infections after each surgery and i had to take about 3

weeks

> of antibiotics. it also sparked up an old infectious disease that the

health

> dept had a meeting on. they were afraid to treat me and was sent to

the head

> of the health dept for treatment. i am trying methotrexate now and

decided

> to keep trying it, but to be honest if i would had read about deb

firsti

> would've told my dr to forget it!!!! i am also praying for debs and

her

> family. kathy in il