What Are Treatment Options for Polycythemia Vera?
What Are Treatment Options for Polycythemia Vera? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.
MPN specialist Dr. Abdulraheem Yacoub provides an overview of available treatment options for patients living with polycythemia vera (PV).
Related Programs:
|
|
How Should You Participate in MPN Care and Treatment Decisions? |
Transcript:
Katherine:
You mentioned using interferons for ET. That’s something that you would also use for polycythemia vera. Yes?
Dr. Yacoub:
Absolutely. So, the same principles will apply to polycythemia vera. We would like to treat the higher-risk patients more aggressively. Hydroxyurea (Hydrea) and interferon are also the first-line therapies in these patients.
The good news in 2022 is that we actually finally have an FDA-approved interferon for our patients. Finally, after 50 years of using interferon, now, we have an FDA approval. So, the new interferon, ropeginterferon alfa-2b is a medication that was studied prospectively in Europe, and it has been approved and in clinical use in Europe under the brand name Besremi.
And this year, it was approved in the U.S. for patients with polycythemia vera, which is a great achievement for the medical field and a great tool to help our patients. We have used other brands off-label in the past, but it’s glad now to get this confirmation from the FDA that this is a standard of care for all patients.
And then beyond that, ruxolitinib or Jakafi, is also approved as a second-line option in patients who have had hydroxyurea as their first line.
So, these are the medicines we use for polycythemia vera. We also use therapeutic phlebotomy. And the goal in high-risk polycythemia vera, or actually in all patient polycythemia vera, is to reduce their hematocrit.
And we want it under 45 percent every day of the year. And we use the tools that we just discussed phlebotomy and medicines to achieve that, in addition to aspirin. So, that’s how PV is more unique than ET. Yes.
