New trial

[crocker]

Has anyone been told about a new drug being trailed which will be taken orally and will have iggs igas and igms and if this works will be given instead of immunoglobulins.The doctor talked about it today

[liz2mac]

Hi Crocker,

Never heard of it, don't see how on earth it could work since IgG's etc come in the blood and would be destroyed by the digestive system. Sam, any thoughts?
I'll ask our medical advisers.
Liz

[bamber]

Sounds so unlikely! I'd love to agree it would work after 35 years of blood product injection one way or another - but no I can't believe it!

[s162216]

I've done a search for trials of a drug like described and have found no record of anything like that being either in development or in trials. The closest thing that I did hear about was about a year ago when I heard that an oral IgA drug was in early development (see here: www.secretoryiga.com/company.html) but its nowhere near ready and its really only in the concept stage. Even if it is successfully developed (>90% of drugs under development fail because of side effects in tissue, animal or human studies, or they simply don't work), it will be at least 10 years before it will be approved.

Plus replacing IgA might not be as good as it sounds - most of the work is done by IgG - so there may be little to no benefit, plus IgA antibodies only last about 2 - 3 days compared to 21 for IgG, so it would cost a fortune, potentially even more than IVIG/SCIG costs. And as pointed out, the stomach acids would likely destroy any antibodies, plus they would have to be absorbed into the bloodstream which would likely present problems. The IgA would be in the wrong place anyway as most IgA is in secretions, not blood.

Either that doctors got something very confused, or theres something we haven't heard about....

Sam