Adult ITP Questions - Recently Diagnosed

Hi,

I am a 28 year old female. I was diagnosed with ITP, thalassemia and leukopenia in January, 2010. I gave birth to my son in November, 2009. My platelets were always in the 240’s before and during my pregnancy. In November, 2009, during the delivery of my son my platelets were 87,000. I was discharged with no worries. They say your platelets could drop during delivery but they usually bounce back shortly afterwards. Unfortunately with me in January, 2010, (2 months after I gave birth) my platelets dropped all the way to 7,000. I was given Decadron the first time I was admitted into the hospital for 4 days. My platelets went back up but fluctuated between 100-150 with no medications for months. I relapsed in October, 2010. They dropped to 8,000 in a matter of days. Now I am on prednisone. Platelets are going up very, very slowly. I was taking 60mg and now I am being tapered of to 50mg daily. My platelets are currently in the 80’s. My doctor said next stage of treatment will be Rituxan. I’m not sure what’s going to happen to my numbers while being tapered off. Will they drop, go up, stay the same. It’s scary….. Has anyone experienced this?

The magic question is where did this come from? I know the cause of ITP in adults is “unknown” but does anyone have any input on this? Does anyone think this is related or caused from my pregnancy?

Does anyone know of any natural remedies? Vitamins?

Gourd:

Welcome to the forum. I'll try to answer your questions, although there aren't many answers.

What will happen to your counts as you taper? Anything can happen. We are all different and respond differently. I would say the majority of people experience a drop as they taper, but some do get nice surprises and find that counts go up or stay the same. I know it's not pleasant to have to treat, but the good news is that you do respond to treatments, so try not to worry too much.

Your magic question - where did this come from? Most of us have the same question. My basic answer to that is genetic predisposition. It just happens. The predisposition is there and something comes along to trigger it. In the case of pregnancy, gestational ITP will usually resolve in a year or so or a few months after breast feeding ends. Some people go into remission and some do not.

Rituxan is a treatment that works well for most. If you respond, remissions can last from 6 months to a few years. I'm actually on my 6th year of remission (after two rounds of Rituxan). I also take 10 mg's of Prednisone daily which may help keep my counts up (I take it for another autoimmune disorder).

As for natural treatments, it's a controversial subject. Some people have luck and some do not. It's hard to say if they work or the person just went into remission on their own. There is a natural treatments section where you can ask. Vitamins generally do not help. It's not that simple.

Gourdine143 wrote:

Hi,



Does anyone know of any natural remedies? Vitamins?

If you do a search of this forum for "homeopathy" you will find a number of posts about it. There are quite a number of people from this forum that have used it successfully (including our family). I would encourage you to look at this route as it is not only inexpensive, it WORKS, and there are no bad side effects. It fixes the body. End of story.

Best wishes to you,

patti