I'm here along with others from PDSA in Orlando at the annual American Society of Hematology (ASH) conference. As usual,we spend days reading, listening, and talking to others, all in an attempt to digest the latest information about ITP and related topics.
The usual question from patients is 'anything new?' especially news relating to insights that will lead to a better life. Science often evolves with small, incremental changes and that's what I'm seeing...slow and steady progress in better understanding the disease and treatments.
Here are a few highlights from a patient perspective:
Just this morning I heard a presentation about drug-induced thrombocytopenia and platelet production. The researcher used quinine as a test drug and found that it not only binds to platelets and can cause platelet destruction, it also inhibits the formation of platelets in the bone marrow. You may think this has nothing to do with you, but if you drink tonic water, you are drinking something containing quinine. While not everyone is sensitive to this or other drugs that can cause thrombocytopenia, it is something to consider if your platelets drop for what appears to be no reason.
There were a number of presentations and posters about the new TPO agents, romiplostim (NPlate) and eltrombopag (Promacta). Because they have been in clinical trials for awhile, both Amgen and GSK now have data from people who have taken these treatments for years. These drugs continue to be effective for most with no new types of side effects discovered, even for those on the drug for a long time. There have been questions about some people on these treatments who suffered thromboembolic events (examples: heart attacks, strokes, deep vein thrombosis) The people who had problems with these all had other risk factors for blood clots such as high blood pressure. Therefore, your personal cardiac risk factors are something for you and your doctor to discuss if you are considering or taking these treatments.
We will report more ASH findings in our next e-news and the winter issue of The Platelet News. Meanwhile, the meeting abstracts and program listings are available now on the ASH web site and the education book will be on their site soon. See
www.hematology.org
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