Neupogen
 

Hi ppl,

Just went thru the literature with Neupogen injection. It says that neupogen is not recommended for MDS. Also it stated that neupogen may increase the blasts cell (progress the disease). Applied my mind and the below are my observations :-

1. neupogen is a growth factor. It promotes or stimulates the bone marrow to produce more white cells, irresepective of whether they are healthy cells or blasts cells. if such is the case then definately it will increase the blasts cells.

2. neupogen does not differentiate between the healthy cells and blasts cells, therefore whatever efect (stimulation in bone marrow) to produce more white cells, it will have same effect on healthy cells as well as blasts cells.

3. If the abiove is the case, is it adviseable to take neupogen specially :-

a) when ur blats percenatge is already high ?
b) when you are not having any infection, just for precautoinary sake, is it advisable to take neupogen ? Means one takes neupogen so that its WBC increases so also its neutrophil counts so that there is less chances of infection, but infection is not dependent on neutrophil counts alone. A healthy person with enough WBC and neutrophil counts also catches infection. So its the fear of catching a infection which drives a person to use neupogen, but when it can/do increases the progress of the disease by increasing the blasts cell, is it advisable to take neupogen ?

regrd,

Neel
c)

Neupogen for patients with MDS
 

Hi Neel,
I've had MDS for 7+ years, started Raeb-1, quickly Raeb-2 at 14% blasts.

Taking Neupogen is somewhat controversal with some doctors recommending it but others not.

I've taken Neupogen on and off over the entire 7 years of my successful treatments. My doctor feels it helps to increase the WBC and ANC and in my case I've always responded to Neupogen. Two other MDS centers of excellence both recommended that I could take 1 Neupogen per week.

Studies have shown that if one is taking Procrit or Aranesp to stimulate red blood cell production taking Neupogen at the same time can increase the success rate of the red blood cell stimulants.

I only take the Neupogen if the ANC is less than 500 (or .05 depending on the scale being use to measure ANC).

Over the years I've had 100's of Neupogen shots and yet remained successful in fighting MDS.

Everyone is different so each patients response will be different.

Hope this helps a little.

Kirby
 

Thanx Kirby,

My father was also given neupogen initially at the time of diagnosis, we not having a slight hint what MDS means at that time. However he too responded well too neupogen and his WBC increased. However our ayurvedic physician was against neupogen. Fortunately the ayurvedic medicines worked reasonably well and there was no need for any other drug or neupogen as his all the cell counts increased and were in normal range for arnd 4 months , but then they gradually started declining. Seems the disease became resistant to ayurvedic medicines. Recently we hesitantly got one shot of neupogen and my father has again responded well to neupogen and his WBC increased. However as his blast count are already very high, so we are hesitant for more infusion of neupogen.

One thing i wanted to know frm u is, why r u taking neupogen ? cos of neutropenic fever or cos of fear that if ANC is lower then 500 then u r at the risk of catching infection ?

One more thing kirby, we are thinking of starting thalidomide, can u tell me abt ur experience in regard to thalidomide.

Does thalidomide increases all the cell lines like Hb, WBC and platelets or only work on one or two of the cell lines ?

As you sstated that u were taking neupogen, it infers that thalidomide was not effective on WBC ? Am i right ?

Moreover what all other medicine did u took along with thalidomide during ur good response with it for 30 months ? What side effects did u had ? and how thalidomide helped in ur counts ?

Thanx, and all the best and god bless

Regards,

neel

Neel,

You can find answers to some of your questions by reading Kirby's Personal Profile.

Thanx Neil
 

thanx for the link Neil,

God Bless.

regrds,

Neel

P.S : on lighter note, ur and mine name sounds similar expects for the spelling.

I noticed that too, Neel.

The name Neil means "champion". It came from Scotland, maybe derived from King Niall of Ireland around the year 400. But I'm not Scottish or Irish!

Do you know the origin of your name?

King Niall