Humira or remicade.

[Bottomless mummy]

I have my appointment next Monday with my gastro and he has mentioned he would like me to go on either one of humira or remicade. He suggested humira would be more beneficial for me because I live in the country so I could do the injecting myself.

I would just like to know people's thoughts on either of these drugs, their experiences, their thoughts etc....

I will be taking either one for the treatment of fistulating disease.

My MRI is on this fri so that will tell more of a story about my fistulas that have popped up on a ct scan.

Thankyou in advance...:ghug:

 

[Gianni]

Remicade only worked for about 2 months for me.

Humira continued to work for a year before I discontinued it because of constant bouts of pneumonia.

Everyone is different. Some people never see benefit from either drug and some have found great benefit from either drug for 10+ years with little to no side effects.

Personally if i had to choose which one to go on first I would choose humira because you are able to inject the medicine yourself so you don't have to go to a clinic and waste two hours of your day.

Hope this helps

Gianni

 

[agrady1]

I had great success on Remicade for a long time. It got me through 2 pregnancies and even put me in remission. I was on it for 8 years and had to come off of it due to side effects. I tried humira after but was not able to tolerate it. I think maybe if I had not already had a problem with the Remicade it would have been different. I have also been on cimzia which is the same class of drug and had to come off of it. Both of these drugs have a really great success rate for a lot of people. As Gianni said there is a lot of individuality in how these drugs work for different people. If you don't mind giving yourself the injection the humira is definitely more convenient. Injecting in your stomach and making sure that the humira is room temperature definitely cuts down on the discomfort of the injections. The only other piece of advice I have is to read up about the drugs on the drug web pages. The side effects for both of them are pretty much the same. I know that the neurological side effects I have had from this class of drugs are rare but I didn't know about them until I had a pretty big reaction to the Remicade. The doctors go over the most common things that you should be aware of but you are your best advocate.
I hope I'm not coming across as being sort of doom and gloom about these drugs. It broke my heart when I had to come off the Remicade. I had been on so many other drugs that hadn't work before they tried it with me and it was a life saver. It's just that in hindsight I realize I was having some scary side effects for at least a year before we realized what was going on and I dismissed them as freak symptoms. I believe in this class of drugs enough that I was willing to try humira and cimzia even though I knew I could have the same reaction which unfortunately I did.
I hope whichever drug you choose helps. Just remember that for a lot of people of one of them doesn't work often times the other does. Good luck