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I have been on Avonex for 4 years. Do you get to a point when you need to change meds? For the past month I have such horrible shooting pains up and down arms and legs and I have been extremely exhusted.

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You may wish to consult with your neurologist. There could be medications that can help with your shooting pains. As far as your question on whether or not you should switch from Avonex to another medication, I can't answer that directly. However, people on interferon-beta sometimes develop neutralizing antibodies against the medication which reduce its effectiveness. This problem is often more prominent with people on Betaseron than with Avonex since Betaseron is produced in bacteria as opposed to a mammalian cell (bacteria don't glycosylate proteins, attach sugar groups, while mammalian cells do and interferon beta is a normally glycosylated protein so an unglycosylated version would be more antigenic). None-the-less, if you feel that your current medication is not being as effective as it once was, then you may want to consult with your doctor about being tested for neutralizing antibodies.

NHE

NHE wrote:You may wish to consult with your neurologist. There could be medications that can help with your shooting pains. As far as your question on whether or not you should switch from Avonex to another medication, I can't answer that directly. However, people on interferon-beta sometimes develop neutralizing antibodies against the medication which reduce its effectiveness. This problem is often more prominent with people on Betaseron than with Avonex since Betaseron is produced in bacteria as opposed to a mammalian cell (bacteria don't glycosylate proteins, attach sugar groups, while mammalian cells do and interferon beta is a normally glycosylated protein so an unglycosylated version would be more antigenic). None-the-less, if you feel that your current medication is not being as effective as it once was, then you may want to consult with your doctor about being tested for neutralizing antibodies.

NHE

NHE Thankyou for you reply
I have and appointment today with my Doctor. Hope it goes well!
Tracyirish

I would also ask to be tested for neutralizing anti-bodies. Unfortunately none of the abcr's are even 50% effective in stopping excacerbations from happening. My neurologist told me that until there is a significant clinical change, I should stick with what's working which is Avonex for me.

Xenova wrote:I would also ask to be tested for neutralizing anti-bodies.

However be prepared for a very expensive blood test. Mine was $995 and the insurance only paid $250. Fortunately I sent in the $200 liability limitation fee so I didn't have to pay the other $750. But it was good to find out that I did not have NAB and was not injecting for nothing.