Gout Pal Interactive

Developing a new gout remedy takes time and money. Lots of money. I’ve just seen an interesting review of Puricase. Follow the money to see if it leads to a successful gout treatment.

Let’s be realistic. A successful gout remedy isn’t just about patient benefits. Drug companies only survive if they make money. A hard hitting review of Savient’s financial prospects, by PharmaTracker, gives an interesting insight into the medical prospects for gout sufferers like you and I.

Putting the treatment in perspective, PharmaTracker notes that of all gout sufferers, the target market for Puricase is small. The numbers are based on the target market being those gout patients who are intolerant of traditional treatments such as allopurinol. This is the target group used for clinical trials of the drug. Of course, if Puricase proves to be successful medically, it might well become the gout remedy of choice.

Puricase

Unfortunately, the review raises some significant doubts as to the long-term effectiveness of Puricase.

Puricase is a genetically engineered enzyme produced from uricase from pigs. Pigs, like most mammals, produce uricase to breakdown uric acid. Humans do not possess anything like this enzyme. Uric acid should occur naturally in humans. It is an effective anti-aging compound. It’s only when we have too much of it that we suffer.

Like it or not

Like allopurinol, Puricase is not tolerated by all patients. The review points out that 29% of patients in the clinical trials had to withdraw due to adverse reactions to the intravenous infusion of Puricase. They did not like it, but, there is another problem for the 71% that did.

If you’ve studied my U-D-R-P view of gout, you will understand that gout pain arises from the body’s reaction to uric acid crystals. Your immune system sees uric acid crystals as a threat. It sees something in the blood that’s not supposed to be there and attacks it.

Guess what? Uricase is not supposed to be in human blood either, and so it gets attacked. Pegylation (genetic engineering) is supposed to mask this fact, but it is not completely effective. Early trials indicate that a significant proportion of gout patients developed antibodies that, to varying degrees, remove Puricase from blood before it has chance to reduce uric acid. It’s not clear yet how significant this reduction in the effectiveness of Puricase is. What is clear, is that there is a significant risk that this particular gout remedy might not be effective enough to be commercially viable.

The review does not consider the impact of those patients who refuse the drug on religious or ethical grounds. I haven’t found out yet how uricase is harvested from pigs. If you have any information on this, please let me know.

All we can do is wait. In the meantime, keep consulting your rheumatologist. You must ensure that you are getting the best treatment currently available to keep your uric acid levels down. Fail to do so, and you risk long term joint damage.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 12:21 pm and is filed under Gout Cures.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.