severe joint pain--is this normal with Promacta

Hi,

First let me say that I am so happy to have found this site. I was diagnosed with ITP 3 years ago and have been on Promacta {75 mg} for the last year. I had to make an emergency room visit a couple months ago and my count was 45, not bad for me. I have gone thru all the other treatments but my counts always dropped after the first week. Currently I don't have medical insurance and I don't have $600 to see a specialist to do a blood test. I still have to wait another couple of months...My question is lately I seem to be having severe joint pain {mainly in my hips}, all I want to do is sleep, but I can't seem to get a decent nights rest. I have read the side effects and need to know if this is normal. I look forward to any response. Thanks

There are lots of reasons for hip-joint pain other than ITP treatments. Could you have arthritis or back trouble?

No-never had this before and just wasn't sure if it could be a side effect

Monica,

I actually started Promacta about a month ago. I'm reading the brochure that came with it and it says muscle aches, back pain and flu like symptoms such as body aches but nothing about joint pain.

Joint pain is on this list of side effects..

www.drugs.com/cons/eltrombopag.html

It's difficult when you have the rarer side effects of a drug because often the doctors don't seem to believe it. Or that's what I found. I had joint pains from CellCept and the doctors firstly ignored it and then said it wasn't from the drug and sent me for all sorts of other testing.. lupus and sjogrens. The specialist there said it wasn't either of those but was simply osteoarthritis. So much for specialists for when I stopped the drug the pains went away although I still have painful elbows sometimes which I put down to some sort of residual damage caused by the drug. I also had capillaritis at the same time which went away too.

Good luck to you.