alternatives to remicade

1. does anyone know if lowered neutrophils is just a remicade thing or a TNF blocker thing? is humira or any other TNF blocker just going to have the same effect -- aside from driving me broke.

2. researching low-dose naltrexone. this does not make sense (although if it works, it works...) -- ramping up your immune system when it's already spazzed out?


is there anything i'm missing? anything else cool i ought to be looking into? back in the day, asacol didn't do the trick. imuran gave me headaches, which didn't encourage me to be a good little girl and take it like i oughtta (meaning every day). and i'm sorry, but methotrexate and interleukin and those are just straight up OUT. not sure if the whip worm thing is available in the US....

Post Edited By Moderator (Ides) : 1/15/2010 4:06:27 PM (GMT-7)

Neutrophils were @ .9, and they cited normal as 1.5. I'm going to have the blood done again this week. The PA @ the infusion center seemed to think Remicade wasn't such a good idea, and I'm two weeks out from my last scheduled infusion. I'd have run it again before now, but my primary wanted me to wait until I was good and over a cold so that everything would be on the up and up. That was mostly for an elevated potassium level, though -- he was telling me if the sample is mishandled or something it can skew the results for that.

So far so good -- I'm not showing any symptoms. The neutrophils might come back up, I suppose, but right now I'm operating under the assumption that Remicade is no longer an option until we know otherwise. Hence, I've gone into research mode.

The cause of low neutrophils would be Remicade, although I don't have any sypmtoms. Symptoms would be a lot like any other low white cell count from what I understand -- prone to infections (bacterial in particular), etc. I'm not symptomatic for high potassium, either (no cramps, heart palps, kidney failure...). Just call me Sara the Anomoly.

went and had blood drawn today -- should hear back tomorrow. man, my elbow hurts like a bugger -- not as bad as last time, but nothing to sneeze at, either. argh. at least i don't look like a junkie this time, though...gotta look at the bright side.