Posts Tagged Interstitial Lung Disease
Should I Move On?
Posted by My RAD Life in Doctors, Drugs, RA/RAD on April 5, 2013
Dear friends,
For those of you that follow my blog, I am very interested in advice…
As you know, I went to get a second opinion on my rheumatoid arthritis treatment because a family friend’s death illuminated the connection of methotrexate to interstitial lung disease.
Well, I went to a pretty renowned hospital and saw a very nice female (wow, rare!) rheumatologist who is not much older than I am. She was easy to talk to, smart, and, since she works in a research hospital, very up-to-date on the latest RAD research.
And get this, she wants me to try to go off methotrexate and see how I do with just Enbrel. Her reasoning was that a) I have valid concerns about MTX side effects, b) my last two liver tests came back high, and c) why not try it?
Granted, she hasn’t been my doc, so hasn’t seen me before my drug therapy or on bad days (it was a good day when I saw her). But she thought my treatment may be a bit unnecessarily aggressive.
If going off MTX didn’t go well, she talked about putting me on Azathioprine, which I know nothing about, but pulmonologists (lung docs) like better than MTX. Has anyone been on Azathioprine or have thoughts about it?
*It should be said that methotrexate causing interstitial lung disease is quite rare, and in many cases treatable. I am just a little sensitive about this because I had severe interstitial lung disease as a child. My lung doc says that I’m not necessarily at more risk than the average RA patient for developing ILD, but I’d like to play it safe.
But, of course, I’d also like my treatment to work.
I’m scared to death of getting off MTX when my current drug therapy seems to be working pretty well.
I also don’t want to be on MTX for the rest of my life…
My current doc brought me down to seven pills per week from 10 because of my liver, but I know he’d rather see me stay on the MTX.
I feel as though I have to decide on both which doc to go with (you can’t have two rheumatologists, apparently; they’ll just disagree on everything) and which treatment plan. And I feel like I have to decide by Sunday, which is methotrexate day for me.
Finally, how do you even break up with a doc who’s been kind, effective, and accessible? And should I? The new hospital offers more cutting edge care and is bigger, so my rheumy would be consulting with other rheumatologists and pulmonologists. I can also participate in research there. BUT, it’s further from my house and my new doc may be a little less accessible than my current one.
If anyone has advice on how to choose doctors, break up with doctors, or switch treatment plans, I would really love to hear it.
Thanks,
Angsty RAD blogwriter 😉
When To Get a Second Opinion
Posted by My RAD Life in Alternative Medicine, Dairy/Casein Free, Dealing, Diet, Doctors, Drugs, Gluten Free, RA/RAD, Relationships on February 10, 2013
Wise words from Thomas Edison. You can get this poster @ behappy.me
I’ve been a bit concerned about the relationship between Interstitial Lung Disease and Methotrexate over the last couple weeks (yet trying not to worry, because worrying leads to flares which leads to more of a chance of RA complications…ha! FML!).
I will still talk to my primary rheumatologist about this on Tuesday, but in the meantime, I’ve decided to seek a second opinion. This wasn’t as easy a choice as it may sound. It felt like I was choosing to cheat on my rheumatologist and giving up on my treatment plan. As I told my friend, my relationship with my rheumatologist is something I want to be sensitive too – he might be in my life for many years to come!
I started by going to my allergist, who also happens to be a respected immunology expert. Up until 2008, I was seeing him once a year for checkups on my recovery from Interstitial Lung Disease. In many ways, he knows my medical history better than I do.
He told me that there is indeed a link between Methotrexate and ILD, and recommended I get a second opinion at a research hospital that specializes in lung disease. They also happen to have rheumatologists who specialize in both ILD and autoimmune diseases. Cool.
Turns out these docs are also in more demand than my current rheumy. I need a referral to even have a chance of seeing one. This left me with the choice of getting that referral from my rheumatologist or from my primary doctor (who I haven’t seen in years because I have another OB/GYN). I chose my primary doc so as not to shake the boat on my relationship with my rheumy. This choice, of course, requires yet another doctor’s appointment (yippee! – where is that sarcasm font when you need it?).
A couple other things of interest came up at my appointment as well.
My doctor said that, given my medical history, he doesn’t think it is likely that I have gluten or dairy allergies or sensitivities. He recommended just eating healthfully and focusing on eating for my marathon training.
I don’t think this means that I will run out and eat gluten again (I’ve already eased up a bit on the dairy), but maybe I’ll think about being more flexible. I also still believe that eating to lower inflammation in my body is a very positive thing I can do to help control my symptoms. My doc is very science-based (as he should be), so until a trustworthy study comes out showing how diet can ease/cure/whatever RA, I think he will be giving this advice.
I ate lunch with my family yesterday and mentioned this, as well as the idea that perhaps GMOs, pesticides and all the other industrial crap that’s made its way into our food supply was more responsible for the rise in gluten intolerance and autoimmune diseases than gluten itself. My brother-in-law and sister’s reaction made me feel like a social pariah. I plan on doing more research on this and posting it here, but I’m certainly not the first person to state this theory, so I don’t believe it’s totally off target… Does anyone have thoughts on this? Or good articles I can forward to my sister??
My doctor provided me with a list of websites that he likes to use for research because they are entirely science-based:
- FARE: Food Allergy Research and Education (www.foodallergy.org)
- American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (www.aaaai.org)
- National Jewish Health (www.njhealth.org)
- National Library of Medicine (www.ncbi.nlm.gov/pubmed)
- FDA Medications Research (www.dailymed.nlm.nih.gov)
- Consortium for Food Allergy Research (www.cofargroup.org)
- The National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (http://nccam.nih.gov)
- The Food Allergy Initiative (http://foodallergyinitiative.org)
- Google Scholar (www.scholar.google.com)
- WebMD (www.webMD.com)
I hope this list helps everyone as you do your own research and become your own advocate for your health.
You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
Photo courtesy science.nationalgeographic.com
I’ve got something heavy weighing on my mind that I will talk to my doctor about when I go to see him this month, but that I’ll share here now. First, some background.
When I was a small, small child, I had severe Interstitial Lung Disease. ILD is a catch-all term for a systemic scarring of the lungs that leads to a decreased ability to take in oxygen. (I was the toddler with the puffed up cheeks from the combo of prednisone and oxygen, carting an oxygen tank behind me that was my height.)
They tried to find a reason for my ILD, testing me for everything, including AIDS, and even doing an exploratory lung biopsy. But they never did figure out what caused my ILD.
As inexplicably as ILD arrived in my life, a couple of years later, it left. I progressively regained most (at least 70%, and at times over 80%) of my lung function. I went in for annual checkups every year from as far back as I remember until about age 24, when they finally declared ILD a non-issue in my life. This is highly unusual. Many of the kids who were at National Jewish Hospital with me are no longer here, and my parents were told to prepare for my death when I was being treated and seemingly not getting results.
ILD has always hung over my life like this mysterious legend. Much of it happened before I was old enough to remember, but the annual check-ups, and the way it affected my parents and sister were impossible to avoid or forget.
So I was a little surprised to get back from Sundance to the news that my mom’s friend had died from ILD and that her husband believes it was caused from the chemotherapy she received years ago for breast cancer. Were ILD and chemo connected at all? I asked Google and found out that not only is ILD connected with chemo, it’s connected to low-dose chemo. As in the low-dose chemotherapy in the form of methotrexate that many of us RA patients use as a treatment.
The stats are pretty scary. In RA-land, it seems that ILD is so common it has its own name: Rheumatoid Lung or Methotrexate-Associated Lung Disease. About 40% of RA patients will have extra-articular disease involvement, as in RA will effect their lungs, cardiovascular system, blood, etc. About 18% of RA patients have lung involvement and, according to one article, ILD. For those living with ILD and RA, the survival mean is a low 3.2 years. (all these fun facts are from this article: https://www.hopkinsarthritis.org/physician-corner/rheumatology-rounds/round-16-rheumatoid-lung-disease/)
The article went on to say: There have been questions posed as to whether methotrexate can predispose to lung disease or whether patients with pre-existing lung disease who are put on methotrexate will develop lung disease thereafter. There’s no evidence for either of those. The fatality rate of patients with proven methotrexate-associated lung disease is around 17%, and re-challenging those patients is not usually recommended. It’s thought that re-challenging patients with methotrexate may somehow cause a stronger secondary response.
(https://www.hopkinsarthritis.org/physician-corner/rheumatology-rounds/round-16-rheumatoid-lung-disease/)
This is reassuring…is there a correlation or not?? There’s no evidence that methotrexate causes ILD (whether pre-disposed or not), yet there are patients with “proven methotrexate-associated lung disease”. Huh.
Here’s what another article had to say about it: ‘Methotrexate lung’ can occur when methotrexate is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis or cancer…Most chemotherapeutic agents can cause ‘chemotherapy lung’, acute ILD with the pathological features of DAD. Incidence is estimated at 10%, although it is difficult to obtain accurate estimates due to the complexities of diagnosis and the small patient numbers involved.
(http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v91/n2s/full/6602063a.html)
Here’s another study about the correlation between methotrexate and lung disease: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1005365/?page=1
Well, great. I feel like my rheumy could have at least mentioned this! Should I be worried since I have a history of ILD? Was it such a non-concern, my rheumy didn’t even bother to bring it up? Should I try to find something else instead of MTX, even though I seem to be getting results?
Does anyone have any experience with this or knowledge about the correlation between methotrexate and lung disease? All thoughts would be much appreciated!
My RAD Life 