Why Your Particular Schedule

Exosurf,

Nobody has a clear explanation of how IVIg works, so nobody can say why you need it every 10 days and others only every six to eight weeks.

Let me make sure you understand half-life. Let’s say that at the end of day 1, you had 100 g of Ig. Let’s also say that at the end of day 21, 50 g of the Ig is still active. This would mean that the Ig had a half-life of 21 days. It would also mean that at the end of day 42, 25 g of the Ig would still be active. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. There are hundreds of thousands of Ig-type antibodies, some of which have longer half-lives than the others do. So to say that Ig lasts for 42 days is a simplification, perhaps taken to extreme.

Whether IVIg induces remission is not clear. There are studies that suggest CIDP can go into remission, but the results don’t seem to depend on treatment. There are hints that pulsed steroids have a better chance of inducing remission, but I don’t think there are any rigorous studies. There is the clinical trial about autologous stem cells, and some other literature that suggests that high dose cytoxan induced remission, but neither of these is considered definitive as of now.

Godspeed in your treatment regimen,
MarkEns