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A package of 'Lyrica' pharmaceutic, the first drug to be approved for fibromyalgia. (Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)
Rheumatoid Arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a serious and dangerous disease. But so are pharma’s immune-suppressing biologic drugs like Remicade, Enbrel, and Humira, which are pushed for treating it. While RA attacks the body’s tissues, leading to inflammation of the joints, surrounding tissues, and organs, immune suppressors can invite cancers, lethal infections, and activate TB.
In 2008, the FDA announced that 45 people on Humira, Enbrel, Remicade, and Cimzia died from fungal diseases. The FDA also investigated Humira’s links to lymphoma, leukemia, and melanoma in children.
This year, the FDA warned that the drugs can cause “a rare cancer of white blood cells” in young people, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) warned of “potentially fatal Legionella and Listeria infections” from the use of these drugs.
This year, the FDA warned that the drugs can cause “a rare cancer of white blood cells” in young people.
Immune suppressing drugs are also hazardous to the pocketbook. One injection of Remicade costs up to $2,500; one month of Enbrel costs $1,500; and a year on Humira costs up to $20,000.
Previously, RA was diagnosed from the presence of rheumatoid factor in the blood and inflammation. Thanks to pharma’s supply-driven marketing, stiffness and pain are all that are required for the diagnosis today. (Athletes and people born before 1970—the line forms to the left!)
In addition to diagnostic wiggle room and a catchy name, RA has other blockbuster-disease requirements. It will “only get worse” if untreated, says WebMD, and it is often “misdiagnosed” and under-reported, says Abbott’s Heather Mason because “people often don’t know what they have for a while.”
It’s so serious a disease, it costs over $20,000 a year to treat but so subtle you may not know you have it? RA sounds like a blockbuster.
Fibromyalgia
Another under-reported disease is fibromyalgia, characterized by widespread, unexplained bodily pain. Fibromyalgia is “almost a textbook definition of an unmet medical need,” says Ian Read of Pfizer, which makes the first drug to be approved for fibromyalgia, the seizure pill Lyrica.
Pfizer gave nonprofit groups $2.1 million in 2008 to “educate” doctors about fibromyalgia and financed PSAs (pharma service announcements) depicting sufferers describing their symptoms without mentioning a drug. Lyrica now makes $3 billion a year.
Still, Lyrica has to fight Cymbalta, the first antidepressant to be approved for fibromyalgia. Eli Lilly prepositioned Cymbalta for the physical “pain” of depression in a campaign called “Depression Hurts” before the fibromyalgia approval. Treatment of a fibromyalgia patient with either Lyrica or Cymbalta hovers around $10,000, medical journals say.
Pharma and Wall Street may be happy with fibromyalgia drugs, but patients are not. On Askapatient.com, the drug-rating website, patients on Cymbalta report chills, jaw problems, electrical “pings” in their brains, and eye problems. This year, four patients reported the urge to kill themselves, a frequently reported side effect of Cymbalta.
Lyrica users on Askapatient.com report memory loss, confusion, extreme weight gain, hair loss, impaired driving, disorientation, twitching, and worse. Some patients take both drugs.
This is the second of a three-part series. Next week: sleep disorders
This story first appeared on Alternet.org.
Martha Rosenberg is a health reporter and author who lives in Chicago.
