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FDA Warning: Cellcept and PML
Published Story by art
http://msnews.acceleratedcure.org/node/3215
Cellcept, an organ rejection treatment used sometimes in MS, has just
received a warning [73] from the FDA that it might cause cases of PML,
the usually fatal brain disease that plagued Tysabri.
[73] http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2008/safety08.htm#mycophenolate
---
Published Story by art
http://msnews.acceleratedcure.org/node/3215
Cellcept, an organ rejection treatment used sometimes in MS, has just
received a warning [73] from the FDA that it might cause cases of PML,
the usually fatal brain disease that plagued Tysabri.
[73] http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/safety/2008/safety08.htm#mycophenolate
---
This is about CELLCEPT which is an anti rejection drug.
This has nothing to do with MS or Tysabri except that it is another drug with the same reaction.
"What is Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy?
Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) is caused by the reactivation of a common virus in the central nervous system of immune-compromised individuals. Polyomavirus JC (often called JC virus) is carried by a majority of people and is harmless except among those with lowered immune defenses. The disease occurs, rarely, in organ transplant patients; people undergoing chronic corticosteroid or immunosuppressive therapy; and individuals with cancer, such as Hodgkins disease, lymphoma, and sarcoidosis. PML is most common among individuals with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Studies estimate that prior to effective antiretroviral therapy, as many as 5 percent of people with AIDS eventually developed PML. For them, the disease was most often rapidly fatal.
With current HIV therapy, which effectively restores immune system function, as many as half of all HIV-PML patients survive, although they sometimes have an inflammatory reaction in the regions affected by PML. The symptoms of PML are the result of an infection that causes the loss of white matter (which is made up of myelin, a substance the surrounds and protects nerve fibers) in multiple areas of the brain. Without the protection of myelin, nerve signals cant travel successfully from the brain to the rest of the body. Typical symptoms associated with PML are diverse, since they are related to the location and amount of damage in the brain, and evolve over the course of several days to several weeks. The most prominent symptoms are clumsiness; progressive weakness; and visual, speech, and sometimes, personality changes. The progression of deficits leads to life-threatening disability and death over weeks to months. A positive diagnosis of PML can be made on brain biopsy, or by combining observation of a progressive course of the disease, consistent white matter lesions visible on a magnetic resonance image (MRI) scan, and the detection of the JC virus in spinal fluid."