Reply To: Rituximab (Rutixn)

Jim-LA

February 25, 2017 at 12:48 am

Hi Fred, I think it’s awful how disabling this disease can be over the years. You have had to deal with it for a couple decades, you’re a trooper! I’m encouraged to hear you have connected with a center of excellence and they seem to be really on top of things for you.

Mixing PE and Rituximab may be a bit tricky if the PE is administered before the Rituxan binds with the CD20 on your B cells. The timing of PE could be counterproductive to the successful treatment using Rituximab. Here are a couple articles about the possible interactions and suggested approaches. Your center of excellence docs are probably already on top of this though, but you should know about it too:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3769676
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/529917_5

Best of luck with your treatments. I hope it makes a big difference in your quality of life as it has for me.

Jim

PS – I was very close to getting the HSCT a couple years ago. More info here:
https://forum.gbs-cidp.org/topic/sct