Older drugs work as good as new for rare disorder

A rare disorder called Vasculitis who causes a need for long term treatment can find a cheaper medication that works just as well as the new drugs; a new research suggests .The older drug called Azathioprine had better results than the newer drugs had said Dr Roland Falk who is a kidney specialist.

One in every 100,000 people contract Vascultis which causes an overly aggressive response to the immune system causing blood vessels to swell creating problems in the kidneys and lungs. The medication, mycopheholate, mofetil (cellCept), which dampens the immune system, is the drug Azathioprine is compared to. At the annual meeting in Atlanta   , the study will be presented at the American College of Rheumatology.

It will also be in the Dec1 issue of the Journal of American Medical Association. In Europe 159 patients were randomly assigned to receive one of the two drugs. Dr. Thomas F. Hiemstra of the University of Cambridge led the research. The severe side effect in both drugs were about the same level.

The conclusion was mycophenolate mofetil that is frequently regarded as a potent alternative to azathioprine there was no evidence found or evidence to support its use as the initial remission maintenance therapy for patients with AVA. Now the patients can take the less expensive drug that seem to work just as good or better.