Costly … patients who wish to try the new trreatment are facing a $42,000 bill. Source: ThinkStock
AROUND 1,500 Australian leukaemia patients have been given hope with a new treatment that delays progression of their cancer by over a year.
The treatment is so powerful it can send patients into shock as it kills nearly 90 per cent of their cancer in the first dose.
A new treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, Gazyva, is approved for use in Australia but not yet subsidised by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Patients who wish to try it are facing a $42,000 bill.
Missing out … Gazyva is approved for use in Australia but not yet subsidised by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. Picture: Thinkstock. Source: News Limited
Edward McNabb from Melbourne is capable of regular 20km trips on his mountain bike after starting the treatment under a clinical trial.
The standard treatment for his leukaemia “buys you a year or two but it is just a temporary relief,” he said.
The 70 year old was diagnosed with the slow growing cancer at age 59 when examinations connected to the removal of a kidney stone showed he had an enlarged spleen and chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
“The prognosis was if I had no treatment I had three years left, that was enough information for me to start the trial,” he said.
Mr McNabb knew he was getting the drug, not the placebo, when he suffered an anaphylactic type reaction after the first dose.
Radical … the treatment is so powerful it can send patients into shock as it kills nearly 90 per cent of their cancer in the first dose. Picture: Thinkstock. Source: ThinkStock
“My eyeballs were about to explode out of my skull, they stopped the infusion and threw me on the trolley and attached monitors,” he said.
“I had massive pins and needles from the top of my head to my toes, went into a daze and was semiconscious,” he said.
“They said I’d had ten years of cancer knocked out of my body in one go,” he said.
Mr McNabb’s doctor Monash University Haematologist Professor Stephen Opat had ten patients in the trial and says doctors were still learning about how to administer the medication and later reduced the first dose.
“We weren’t expecting it to work so rapidly,” he said.
“When you’ve got a lot of leukaemia cells and they die that quickly it can make you very, very sick,” he said.
The drug has some serious side effects including increased risk of infections. Picture: News Corp Australia. Source: News Limited
Professor Opat says the treatment is an important step forward in treating the cancer.
A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year showed Gazyva delayed the progression of the cancer in patients using the drug in combination with an older chemotherapy by 26.7 months.
This was 15 months longer than progression free survival in patients using standard treatment.
The drug has some serious side effects including increased risk of infections, it can lower white blood cell counts and reduce the ability of the blood to clot. Fever, cough, and muscle and joint pain are also common reactions.
Originally published as Shock leukaemia treatment gives hope