ATG Treatment Expectations

[disco3md]

My wife has serve AA. IN a clinical trial @ NIH. was on eltrombopag, didn't help her enough, so now she's starts the ATG Jan 9th.
I've heard/read number of things about the treatment. Wanted to get a feel about what to expect in terms of length of hospital stay? Reactions to the treatment? How soon will she start to feel better? Side effects ect?

thanks much

[bailie]

You might start with the search feature for the forum in the above window and enter "ATG Treatment" in titles.

[DanL]

ATG side effects vary - definitely have your wife accept all pre-medications to help with them. I was treated with ATG prior to transplant, and it is the only thing that I have done that made me feel awful - severe flu-like symptoms that went away for me after two days. Here is a link from UPMC that lists the most common issues with treatment:

http://www.upmc.com/patients-visitor...-globulin.aspx

From what I have seen, results vary. A lot of people take cyclosporin with ATG treatment, especially for AA. Results can take anywhere from 1 month to 9 months to begin

Here is a pretty good article on AA treatments, side effects, and effectiveness:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3138728/

This article gives more specifics about timeline:

http://www.aamds.org/treatments/ther...essive-therapy

Hope this info helps.

Dan

[Hopeful]

Hi disco3md,

Your wife will be in good hands at NIH, as I am sure that they have seen-it-all and know how to respond.

ATG is sometimes called shake-and-bake. That is what it was for me. I spiked a very high fever and had severe chills the first night. This was definitely the most miserable part of it all. It is also the riskiest part. If you can stay with your wife through that first night, I am sure that she will be grateful.

I felt pretty wiped out for the 2nd day and had painful swelling in my chest. By the third (?) or fourth day, I felt good enough to be walking around the hospital.

I had severe headaches when they administered the ATG. Some people will get severe leg cramps and a rash. Everyone is different.

How long she stays in the hospital will be dependent on whether she gets an infection or complication. She could be sent home within a week if all goes well. I felt like I was getting better almost immediately after ATG. It still took a while for me to get off transfusions, but at least I could feel that I was getting stronger instead of weaker.

Best of luck to her!

[Neil Cuadra]

Some patients, including my wife, have uncomfortable but temporary and non-life-threatening adverse reactions to the very first dose of ATG. For example, they may have allergic reactions, such as a rash. It seems that reactions differ from person to person, and the doctors can't predict them, but they can and do make adjustments to avoid reactions once they know how ATG affects you.

Some people are luckier and don't have unpleasant side effects.

The treatment takes only a few days, but recovery and resulting improvement can take months. It depends on the patient's disease and circumstances.

[disco3md]

thanks for all for the info on the replies really helped with my research