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Since the COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for use in the United States, people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and their doctors have had questions about whether the shots are as effective if they take common medications to control their disease.
People on immune-suppressing medications were excluded from the clinical trials. It has been unclear whether the vaccine behaves the same in someone on these drugs as it does in the healthy people studied in the trials.
Now, answers are starting to emerge, and it appears those concerns may have been warranted. A study published May 25 in the
Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases found that up to one-third of people taking methotrexate failed to achieve an adequate immune response to the shot.
By Morgan C. Fitzgerald
California has one of the weakest laws in place to protect patients against the onerous and potentially dangerous practice of step therapy, according to a new study published by the Global Healthy Living Foundation.
Step therapy, also known as a fail-first requirement, can be a profit-generating treatment protocol enforced by health insurance companies under which patients must fail medications in defined tiers before receiving approval to “step up” to the medications prescribed by their doctors.
Insurance companies promote this requirement under the guise of ensuring that patients receive the most effective and reasonably priced drugs when in reality this practice forces patients to compromise treatment decisions and blocks access to essential medications.
No, Biologics Are Not Natural Monopolies
By Robert Popovian, Pharm.D., MS, and Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D.
Biologics are not natural monopolies, as certain individuals continually assert. This assertion threatens future innovations, greater healthcare affordability, and patient access.
It is well understood that biologics have improved our ability to treat diseases such as cancer and autoimmune ailments. Biologics are also expensive; they now represent 43% of invoice spending, and spending has been growing 14.6% annually over the past five years.
Until recently, originator biologics lacked any meaningful competition from less costly off-patent generic copies better known as biosimilars. The biosimilar market in the U.S. has developed slower than expected in some therapeutic areas and far faster in others compared to the European market, which began the introduction of biosimilars a decade earlier.
This article has been reviewed and updated as of April 13, 2021.
On April 13, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asked states to temporarily halt using the Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine “out of an abundance of caution” after receiving six reports of a rare and severe type of blood clot forming in individuals after receiving the vaccine. CreakyJoints is monitoring this news closely and will keep readers updated as more information is released.
Now that that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued emergency use authorization (EUA) for the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine, people who take immunosuppressant medications, are immunocompromised, or who have autoimmune conditions have questions and concerns about what this development means for them.
Why Immunocompromised Patients Should Not Delay Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine creakyjoints.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from creakyjoints.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.