New drug Ibrutinib can cure blood cancer patients for £74,000 a year

#ibrutinib #CLL #lymphoma #leukemia #bloodcancer Ibrutinib is a new drug that would soon be available in the market to treat blood cancer patients – the medical profession has hailed it as a revolutionary drug that can switch off the dreaded disease of cancer. Once prescribed, the once-a-day tablet, could spare blood cancer patients the traditional chemotherapy with its side effects.
This has been reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 21 March 2015.
As explained by Professor Stephen Devereux, consultant haematologist at King’s College Hospital in London, chemotherapy kills cancer cells and also normal cells and therefore has a number of side effects.
However, since the Ibrutinib drug is targeted at the B-cells, the side effects are minor. Moreover, it is not necessary for patients to shift to the hospital to get it administered.
On a rough estimate, nearly one in every 25 people will be diagnosed with blood cancer during their lifetime – that would translate into 25,000 people annually in the UK. Out of these, the breakdown would be 2,800 with CLL, the most common type of leukemia, while around 500 will have MCL, a rare type of B-cell lymphoma.
As things now stand, a course of ibrutinib is a costly affair – it would cost up to £74,000 a year – and will be prescribed only to those patients whose disease does not respond to chemotherapy, or those who have relapsed following chemotherapy.

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