I dont know how good or bad this is, but I will be getting a prescription for this soon. We need something strong like this.
Posted by bears1985 (Member # 17271) on :
bump
Posted by seibertneurolyme (Member # 6416) on :
Bears,
Is Dr F the one prescribing this? Does he recommend it rather than the pyrimethamine I have been reading about?
Bea Seibert
Posted by mjbucuk (Member # 843) on :
Bears or Bea.... if you find out abt a LLMD using coartem for babesia, would you please PM me with a dosage. I want to run it by Dr J for my 17 yr old with b. duncani lyme & bartonella(he is not making any headway with his headache no matter what we try.)
Posted by bears1985 (Member # 17271) on :
Dr F is not prescribing it. It cannot be bought in online, because it is only used in hospital settings. They do not want "resistance" to build up to it. I do not know the dosage and I do know that it can only be prescribed for 3 days.
Posted by lou (Member # 81) on :
So this means we won't be able to use this against babesia after all? I don't understand the issue about resistance. This is not a big malaria country. And it won't be over the counter.
Posted by lou (Member # 81) on :
Possibly it can't be bought online, but it is not restricted to hospitals. Here is a line quoted from the sources in the links given above:
"In the US, Coartem will be made available through pharmacies and hospitals."
Note that it includes pharmacies.
However, it was approved for malaria, so it would be an off label use for babesia.
Posted by feelfit (Member # 12770) on :
Re Riamet, if you do a search there is a member here who cured her babesia in 5 days with self tx with riamet.
Posted by Lymepool (Member # 15827) on :
I checked on the availability of Coartem in early May and the response I got was equivalent to "the distribution pipeline isn't filled".
Based on this resurrected thread, I e-mailed the manufacturer about how to get the drug. The response was to have the pharmacist contact the Novartis customer service (1-800-526-0175) for assistance. My conclusion from this, (which may not be accurate) is that the drug supplies may not be plentiful in the US.
From the marketing point of view, this drug is approved for treatment of acute malaria, not prevention. Drugs like Malarone which you can get prescribed to take along on a trip for prevention, are readily available. Even so, my insurance company refused to pay for Malarone, because it was being prescribed for something other than malaria.
The CDC report is that less than 2000 cases of malaria are treated in the US each year. So I'm not surprised if the company doesn't see the need to have much Coartem stored inside the US.
The FDA is also under fire for not watching drugs more closely when they are first introduced to the market. (In recent years, a number of drugs have been withdrawn from the market or had their use restricted because of problems discovered a year or two after going on sale.) So the company may be using a very strict "mind your p's and q's" approach for early distribution and more data gathering about the patient population using the drug.
Of course, this is not helpful to us in the USA babesia community who have seen the reports of patients in the EU having success with this treatment. So we have a dilemma.
Sorry I don't have a solution, but hopefully my opinion/ramblings may give some points to consider.
Lymepool
Posted by bigdreams87 (Member # 20493) on :
are there threads on here about people with babesia who have used it?
Posted by pamoisondelune (Member # 11846) on :
Selma (posting as Hardynaka) used Riamet for a few days to knock down her babesia, in Europe. She later used many herbals to kill it; i forget if it was the same infection or a new infection.
Posted by seibertneurolyme (Member # 6416) on :