Showing posts with label Maintenance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maintenance. Show all posts

Monday, February 8, 2010

Interferon maintenance for myeloma

After achieving the plateau stage following my first autologous stem cell transplant for myeloma in 2001 my haematologist put me on maintenance therapy of interferon alpha.
At that time trial data suggested that interferon maintenance therapy improved remission duration in patients following transplants.
The interferon was self administered, injecting into my thigh or stomach three times a week.
Initially I suffered side effects of flu like symptoms and chills the day after the injections. These progressively reduced and disappeared after four weeks.
Eventually I began to suffer the symptoms of depression. This was attributed to the Interferon therapy. My depression was getting progressively worse so in early 2005 I stopped the Interferon and the depression disappeared.
With the introduction of the newer treatments we now have, Interferon seems to have fallen out of favour.