when does uceris become available?

Have any of you talked to your GI about trying it?

Is it only used for acute flares or a type of maintenance? Anyone know?

seasons21 said...
Is it only used for acute flares or a type of maintenance? Anyone know?

It's for mild to moderate flare-ups.

The jury is still out in regards to maintenance of remission because steroids have never proven useful for maintaining remission before, and also the worry about adrenal suppression and other side effects (bone loss, etc).

I'm thinking uceris may work well with mesalamine (tabs and enemas) to have a combined effect that is better than either alone.

Just my gut feeling, but I think it will have limited usefulness in severe flares, except perhaps to help get off prednisone. Time will tell.

Hey killcolitis i tried Clipper too. It's hard to tell whether Clipper or the herbs stopped the bleeding last flare up. It was not until day 5 of clipper that the bleeding stopped; but that also coincided with day 2 of the Isatis Cooling herbs. So can't really tell which one it was. Oh, and it was day 5 of the Paleo diet as well haha.

Anyway, what got my attention was that you said your daughter did not grow on Clipper and also that it was 10x stronger than pred? I did not experience the same side effects as Pred; my only side effects after 30 days on it were mild anxiety in the morning. And a bit of moon face. But no crazy bipolar tendencies like on pred. So i thought hey that must mean it's weaker.

I personally would not use this as a maintenance med because its a steroid. Perhaps it's a bit more easier than pred but a steroid nonetheless. Long term steroid use can lead to a whole slew of health issues.

I'm also leery of trying any med that just comes out. Who knows how your body is going to react to it. I tend to wait until a meds been out for while that has documentation of reactions (and not just from a handful of people) before trying it.

Gary, that can also be said for cortenemas. Supposedly there is no systemic absorption but yet you are not supposed to be on them for longer then 8 weeks (ideally) because a small amount of steroid actually does enter the blood stream. So maybe with Uceris it's the same as cortenemas where after a while a small dose does still become systemic?

It's just kind of funny because just about everyone who has used pred has been on it for longer than 8 weeks and yet they won't prescribe the nonsystemic steroids for longer than 8 weeks due to possible systemic effects. I guess part of the difference is that pred can be tapered while the others are, for the most part, full dose and then stopped. Even though Uceris has supposedely put people into remission I have never seen any figures of how long that remission has lasted. That would be intesting to know. Maybe the best way to take it is for 8 week periods, two or three times per year, whether you are flaring or not. It seems like it would be a mistake to just sit around waiting for another flare and then start taking it again. That never seems to work out as future flares always seem to get harder and harder to treat.

Gary, there aren't figures for any UC med that show how long people are in remission, at least not any that I've come across. It's too expensive to follow people for months/years afterward.

I also remember reading somewhere that steroids don't prevent flares from occuring. So there's no point to take them as a preventative.

Fruitgirl- I can state categorically that low dose pred would prevent me from flaring up, pretty much ever- I know this from desperate self experimentation (I do eventually flare but only because I eventually taper off). Now, granted, pred is toxic long term and that is why docs get hysterical about its use for maintenance- but the reason there is no data on its preventing flares is because it is not approved for maintenance, so no such study would ever be approved- but I know from personal practice that if i could stay on low dose pred, I would never flare (or the rare flare is so brief it is extinguished in 48 h and one is back on the low dose)....

Note that I am NOT encouraging anyone to be on low dose pred- just saying that if it werent for its other issues (and in low physiologic doses that could be debated too, but that's another story) that it truly could keep one in constant remission, for all practical purposes. I do hope uceris has a very very non systemic profile- it seems that is not really the case for entocort.

I ran into this crap with my first autoimmune disease. To me it is like lying to patients. I was told that prednisone worked 80% of the time to put patients into remission. They forget to mention the little tidbit that you had to contiune taking it and that it worked closer to 0% of the time if you tapered off. They then gave me a biologic, saying that that worked 80% of the time but forgot to mention that the effects quickly waned off and that you would have to continue doing it every few weeks. Then they told me that if I had had surgery to remove my spleen that that worked 80% of the time. They forgot to mention the little tidbit that that was only immediately after surgery and as the months are years rolled on that the percentage got lower and lower and that many people would be back to square one, minus their spleens. It could be this Uceris puts a big percentage of people into remission but one month later you are back to square one all over again. I don't understand why someone somewhere can't just tell us the truth and lay it on the line.