6MP added to Remicade

I've been on 6MP and remicade since 2012 and I have not experienced a side effect from them. My quality of life has improved greatly, and I acheived a remission for the first time.

The safety profile is very much the same for 6MP as is your remicade, nothing new or troubling in the mix. As once you suppress your immune system slightly, as happens with 6mp or remicade, then it is the same things like increased odds of infection that apply across the board. If you're already already okay with taking remicade, then there's nothing new to worry about. When reading about 6MP on the internet, it is important to know that this is a medication used at much higher dosages for other illnesses and that yields higher odds of side effects. When we talk about Crohn's dosages of 6MP the side effects are fewer and less severe than they are for some other illnesses. So, context (what disease and dosage) are very important factors to consider when reading about them.

about 20% of people starting 6MP initially experience a nausea (temporary lasting a few weeks), and taking it just before bed with a snack helps reduce the odds of it.

The blood work starts initially at every other week, is reduced to monthly, and then every other month, and stays at every three months for the duration your are on the medication. You just need a couple good blood test results back to begin reducing the test frequency. When we flare our White Blood Cell count goes through the roof, and WBCs are known to directly cause inflammation within our intestines. 6MP reduces the rate in which new WBCs are generated, reducing their total amount. The less WBC we have, the less inflammation can be caused by our immune systems, and the better our Crohns symptoms get. The blood monitoring makes sure our WBC count doesn't get too low.

John, how often do you take remicade, and have you increased its dose (miligrams) in time? It's great that you are in remission from the two.

To the OP: I've been using 6mp for 3 years, along with biologics. I have not experienced any side effect from it and I am using the maximum dose (1.5mg/body weight).

Adding immunosuppressants like 6mp to remicade is a popular method to increase the possibility of reaching (and staying in) remission, and decreasing antibody formation to the remicade.

If you get regular blood tests, you will probably be fine.

Thanks.

Although 6MP is used in very high dosages as one of the multiple cocktail of drugs in chemo, it is not the same reaction at all for Crohn's patients (much lower dosages, only the one med and not many together like in chemo). You are not going to loose all of your body hair, nor is it going to fall out in clumps like chemo patients. Chemo is a cocktail at very high dosages, and entirely different

Every medication available for Crohn's lists hair loss or thinning hair as a rare side effect, despite the fact that all of those medications have very different active ingredients, different inactive ingredients, and different mechanisms of action (from anti-inflammatory mesalamines, to MTX/6mp, to biologics like remicade/stelara). To me, that makes it sound like the hair loss isn't at all related to the medication. I've known some without medications who still complain of hair loss during flares.

Most likely, hair loss is a delayed-reaction to our flare (perhaps delayed by a couple months). During our flare we can get malnourished due to inflammation in the intestines, become vitamin deficient in B, B12, D, and have low blood-iron (an anemia). Any one of those things can cause hair loss by itself. Hair is one of those things your body can get rid of during periods of deficiency and great stress on the body, and it will regrow once those underlying conditions change. Hair regrowth is a delayed-reaction to recovery from your flare, perhaps delayed by 2-months.

I've been on 6mp since 2012, and still have a full head of thick hair. You'll be fine.

6mp works very slowly and gradually - so much so that you probably won't notice any changes from one day to the next, or even one week to the next. It can take months before it has fully kicked in.

If it gives you side effects like tiredness, you can take it at night. You can take it in the morning. You can split the dose and do half each way. You can take it with food. Or without food. Whatever you find you tolerate the best.