Reply To: rituxin (again)

Sanjay watch for any back pain and muscle aches with the Imuran. Hubby lasted about 2 1/2 weeks on it before he developed sepsis and was hospitalized with high fever, pancreatitis, and pneumonia. By the time I got him to the hospital he was agitated and getting delirious. Within a week of going on Imuran he started to talk about muscle aches (I think in his legs) and then about back pain. It really sneaked up on us how quickly he got deathly ill. We were totally blind sided with his side effects as the neurologist didn’t warni us that could happen. He went from being a healthy guy to be close to death. The sepsis caused a huge relapse of the CIDP too. Many people do fine on the Imuran but there are people like hubby that get blind sided with a bad reaction. My theory is that many people have small infections in their bodies that never get full blown. Hubby had past minor diverticulitis or irritable bowel issues and he uses a CPAP for sleep apnea. CPAP users are at higher risk for picking up chest infections with bacteria growing in the tubing and a lot of CIDP’ers seem to have irritable bowel issues so there can be a little pocket of infection can hang around in the gut. Imuran gets those infections going rampantly if they pre-exist. Younger people seem to have less of these side effect issues. Hubby is 64.