New Infusion Drug for Active Lupus May be Pricey

The new infusion drug for active lupus sufferers may be pricey.

Human Genome Sciences has reported success with an experimental drug call Benlysta which is great news for lupus patients. It may be the first new treatment discovered in decades for the complex disease of lupus.

Lupus is an autoimmune disease that afflicts around 1.5 million Americans and 5 million people worldwide. Most are women between the age of 15 and 45.

The disease is very difficult to diagnose because its symptoms often appear to be those of other diseases. It sometimes takes years to get an accurate diagnosis.

The company reported that patients receiving the drug showed significant improvement in an array of symptoms that indicate overall health and quality of life.

Benlysta injections, which take at least six months for the effects to take hold, is not useful for patients hospitalized with severe lupus. Nor is the drug to be used for people in the mild early stages of Lupus, said Dr. Daniel Wallace of UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. It is primarily for people who have an active form of the disease with perhaps one organ involved. The hope is to stop the disease from getting worse and prevent other organs from being affected.

My sister suffers from Lupus and I am so hopeful this drug will be able to help her.

However, the new infusion drug for Lupus may be pricey. The drug is a monocional antibody which is a protein that must be produced under exacting conditions and has to be given by infusion once a month. Other monocional antibodies in use for other diseases cost thousands of dollars per dose.