Article on biosimilars....good or bad??

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Biosimilars may be available in Europe but I haven't come across them in the UK - at least not for Crohn's. Not really sure what the massive deal is, other than insurance companies potentially switching somebody from Remicade to its biosimilar equivalent solely 'cos it's cheaper. But insurance companies do that sort of thing already; it's despicable behaviour, but nothing new.

It'll be interesting to see if the biosimilars are as effective as the biologics.

Interesting. I think I'm concerned about the side effects not being tested enough; even though they are considered inactive ingredients, I just worry that the they won't be "similar" enough and that insurance companies will force switches without looking into all of the possibilities. I am concerned they haven't been through a good enough vetting process. It's hard enough to not build up antibodies for Remicade, etc.; throwing something like this into the mix might be hard in the long run, and it's not like you can just switch back to the original biologic.

Just seen this thread, it was me who posted about inflectra. I was put on that rather than remicade purely for cost reasons. I can only speak from my personal experience of course but it's worked incredibly well for me, I had my first infusion around mid-June of this year and have seen a massive improvement since then. Before the inflectra I was unable to get off steroids (I'd been on them for about a year at this point) and was facing surgery but I managed to get off them after about my 4th infusion so I'm so glad I went for it. I haven't really had any noticeable side effects either, I get a bit tired the day after an infusion but that seems pretty common with remicade too from what I've read! It's literally changed my life; I was looking at potentially having to take a break from uni but because of the infusions I've managed to keep going!