Humira Level Too Low?

I’ve unfortunately been having a flare up for a little over a year now and I am not sure how much longer I can continue like this. Prior to this flare up, I was taking Apriso to maintain my remission. When my flare up began, I was very reluctant to try a biologic (given the possible long term risks, cost, etc.), so we tried just about everything else (suppositories, enemas, steroids, probiotics, different brand of mesalamine, etc.). The only thing that worked for me was prednisone, but my doctor said I couldn’t stay on it long term.

I reluctantly started Humira in May, and still wasn’t feeling 100% better after 3 months, but my doctor said it may take up to 6 months to know for sure if the medicine would work or not. At this point, he recommended a blood test to check my antibody levels. During this 3 month period, I was taking 40 mg every other week (aside from the initial higher dose on day 1) and the humira level came back as being low enough to probably be the reason why I wasn’t feeling better.

My doctor said this could be due to how my body absorbs or metabolizes the medicine. Has this happened to anyone before?

Now he is trying to change my prescription to an injection once a week, but my insurance company is trying to use every stall tactic and excuse to prevent this. This may end up having to go through the appeals process, which sounds like it could take weeks.

In the meantime, I am still sick, as nothing has changed, and I am starting to lose hope. Has anyone had a similar result with humira levels being low, and/or difficulties getting insurance approval to increase the frequency of the dosage?

DIfferent possible causes for low humira levels.
1.) You could be using up the humira fast, due to your disease severity and extent.
2.) Your blood could be clearance humira proteins very fast.
3.) Antibodies against humira can cause the medication to be less effective, and have very low levels.

Getting Humira more frequently, likely weekly, might help when you get through the insurance nonsense.

Switching to remicade might work, as remicade is weight dosed, and you have a lot more options for dosing (adjusting frequency and/or amount of med given each time).

They should be able replace or revive the voided prescription. Even if the doc had to send another, it should be filled because already approved.

Check with your doc .. they may have a sample pen for you to use until this get straightened out. I had a misfire one time and the doc was able to give me one so I didn't miss my next injection because it was taking Humira too long to replace the pen

My doctor did not have any sample pens, as they said they needed to be ordered if they ever required any. I didn’t expect Abvie to just hand them out for free like other pharmaceutical samples given the cost of the medicine. He did manage to send another prescription back to the specialty pharmacy though, who said they are still processing it. Just what I wanted to hear.... more time wasting. In the meantime, I’m starting to feel worse, and will probably not get any more Humira until late next week, which will be two weeks past when I was supposed to take my last dose.

Since my health insurance company essentially decides what essential and life changing medicine I have access to and how much of it based on their greed, and not entirely on my doctor’s reccomendations, is there any other way to buy Humira? Can this medicine be purchased from Canada (or somewhere else) somehow?