Just received a call from my doctors office. My test results show no antibodies and my drug levels are within range of where they need to be. They didn’t give me exact numbers but the results will be available on the office portal for me to view soon. They’ve told me to continue as planned with my infusion tomorrow and then we will monitor response.

My question is, if my tests look good… what’s with this flare?

Did that help you get back to where you felt better? For now they’re just having me get it at the 5mg tomorrow to see how I respond. They said since I had covid recently they think it could be why I’m flaring? It’s all confusing to me.
Another random questions, does not antibodies mean an infusion reaction is not likely? I’ve always been worried about having one and a see talk on the forum of antibodies being related to reactions?

Hailey the way my gi explained antibodies while on Remicade, as long as my Remicade levels were good & I did not develop antibodies I was on the good path. It's when you develop antibodies things go south.

I had a reaction to it on my 3rd infusion, was given pre-meds, slowed the infusion rate down & I never had another reaction.

You responded well to the initial dosing, then caught covid & you have a set back, that's not surprising. If I remember right this is your 4th dose, see where you are at when the next dose is due. It gets tiresome not feeling well, but it takes some time & patience.

Take care.

I'm in a similar situation. I have high levels of Inflectra and no antibodies, yet have been in a flare for two months now and have had two infusions in that time as well. I cannot go any higher as I'm at max dose and max frequency. So we've decided to switch medicines to Stelara. Throughout my Inflectra journey, they've tested my levels/antibodies and many times they were low and I had small amount of antibodies, but was never flaring. So they kept raising my dose and frequency "in order to be pro-active." It was frustrating because they kept giving me more medicine even though I felt fine. Now we've reached the end and I cannot raise it anymore AND I'm flaring. I hate to lose this medicine but what am I to do.

If you still have wiggle room to increase your dosage and frequency, that's probably the route to take. Sometimes your body needs to find the right recipe. In my case, my GI claims my body has found a different way to cause inflammation so Inflectra, no matter what the levels, will not work. Good luck!

Thanks all. I guess we’ll see what happens after my infusion tomorrow. I’m just hoping it will lessen the symptoms I’m having.

🤞🤞🤞

You should keep a calendar of symptoms, if you aren’t already it will help to show your dr in case you need to adjust your infusion times or rates. Hopefully you won’t need to, but would be helpful just in case.

CCinPA: if I do need them closer together, will that be something that insurance has to approve?

How do they go about getting that approved? Are there more tests they have to show insurance? For example, if I have symptoms start up again around 5-6 weeks from now, can my doctor just say symptoms returned as justification to get shorter times between infusions?

Thanks everyone. I’ll definitely keep notes these next 8 weeks on symptoms if any return. I feel so much better since the infusion and I’m so grateful for that. I didn’t have much hope that it would work

That’s a great sign Haley! Congrats!