I hope and pray all are ok with good health and spirit.
My question is abut how long i have to take the tasigna ? .Currently i am fit and more healthy .I am using tasigna for last 4 years my test reports are fine i have discuss with my doctor they told me that you have to take this through out your whole life.
Any one here who have taken Tasigna for some years and now stopped ?
Best Regards
Sheikh
Hi Sheikh
there is no general answer to your question about how long you need to take nilotinib (Tasigna). There have been a range of studies that show that there is a good chance of remaining in remission when stopping, but it will not work for some people. At the UK patient day last year Prof Clark made a presentation on this (you can see the presentation here). Most of the patients in the trial he talks about were on imatinib, but there were a few nilotinib and dastinib patients as well. The general advice seems to be that the longer you are at MR4 or better, the greater your chances of maintaining this if you do stop. I talked to my consultant about this and he felt he would not really consider it before 5 years at very low levels. Some people will be able to stay off the pills - there are various trial results of 40-70% are successful in staying in remission after 1-2 years. Pretty much all those who have lost remission have re-gained it when they started the pills again. This needs to be a discussion between you and your doctor, but hopefully the forum can help you be well-informed for that discussion. As Scuba has pointed out on several occasions, people on this forum can be more up to date on new thinking on CML than some doctors - we need to help them to make the best decisions for us.
I believe Prof Clark updated his talk at the Patient day last week - when David is able to get those talks loaded up on the site (which is a big task) there may more information available. Hope this helps.
