Until I just did some reading, I hadn’t realized that Velcade doesn’t work for about 2/3 of us. I have been told by my doctor, however, that it does seem to work especially well for IgA MM patients (I’m one of those).
“Bortezomib seems to work in about one-third of patients who use it, but we have not been able to predict which ones,” says the study’s lead author, Leif Bergsagel, M.D., a hematologist at Mayo Clinic Arizona. “We now have identified a group that will likely respond because these nine mutations seem to be present in at least 25 percent of newly diagnosed patients.” From http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2006-rst/3817.html
The combination of Velcade + Doxil does have better results in people who respond to it. Based on a study conducted at UNC and other places, Dr. Orlwoski reports, “the combination group’s median time to progression – the time interval between the response to treatment and the time the disease starts to show evidence of growing or recurring – was 9.3 months, while those on Velcade alone progressed after 6.5 months.”
From: http://www.unchealthcare.org/site/newsroom/news/2006/Dec/myeloma. One question I have to remember to ask about this is, is this TTP after the 8 21-day cycles of treatment?
I still haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to add IV dexamethasone to the Velcade/Doxil regimen. I have until Tuesday to decide.
I hate to admit this, but I’m envious of the people who have remissions from their first line of treatment. Any treatment, to be honest. I’m secretly hoping for such good results from Velcade that I’ll decide to wait for relapse to have an SCT. What? It could happen!
Indeed it COULD happen! And even the SCT is only a temporary measure, so why not do the less-risky meds first? You go girl!