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Sunday, April 13, 2014

MEDICAL SENSE

I admit (and did before) that I never had any interest in learning, making sense and/or understand anything in what I’m calling the “guess-science”, for the most part I follow what my “common logic” tells me what makes any sense.
I have, however been in email contact both with important bio-engineers and even people at the FDA who for their own reasons simply tell me that they are Mr. I, or Mr. B or whatever, I guess because they never want to risk to be (mis-)quoted in what they say in anything they decide to give their inputs.
So what I’m writing here comes from one of these “nobody” involved in the TBI recovery research and given that it makes sense to me I quote it almost literally (and in Italic).
I explain something basic to you about disease, in particular complex diseases having to do with brain injury or degeneration.  The outcome of a particular stroke or TBI event, typically kills brain cells within a central zone, and rather than killing cells in the outer zone, or penumbra, does inhibit their activity.  What Enbrel seems to be doing is to be removing this inhibition, most likely on synapses because of the rapidity of action.  This has not been approached by previous treatments.  No current treatment is going to bring back the dead cells, which is why there is much interest in stem cell research, which aspires to do this.  
Enbrel, on the other hand, appears to remove cell inhibition in the penumbra.  How well someone responds, is determined by how big the central, as distinct from the outer, zone, is.  If a large central zone is damaged, Enbrel outcomes appear to be telling to the field that the outer, inhibited zone is often larger than previously suspected.

This type of unknown aspect of many of these diseases is why outcomes vary.  It is a principle applying to all conditions in which research that is more basic is required, but it rarely is looked at properly because funding in general is scarce.  A positive outcome in rheumatoid arthritis, the biggest use to which Enbrel is put, is that about 70%, for essentially the same reason.
And this is why my injured logic and intelligence can’t let me stop hoping that sooner than later somebody will figure out that this “off-label” use of Enbrel can truly save our country from its financial difficulties and put back to work the (too) many victims of TBI who can’t wait for the already existing solution to be widely adopted by our government and the entire US guess-science population.
Sadly too many MD have already attempted to give logic to their refusal to treat me, but if anyone might have a word in my support I ask to please leave their comments.





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