The Febuxostat Debate

[Keith Taylor (GoutPal Admin)]

I have recently extended the febuxostat information in the Gout Treatment section

This new uric acid lowering medication is now prescribed as Uloric in the USA, and adenuric elsewhere.

If you use it, or have questions that are not answered on the GoutPal.com site, please join this debate.

This gout treatment debate is a little less focused than other debates. Normally, I would limit it to side-effects, usability, or some other specific topic. In fact, as the debate here grows, I may well split the debate to smaller topics. For now, as this …

[Keith Taylor (GoutPal Admin)]

Please add your questions, experiences and opinions, on the febuxostat debate page, after reading the gout debate guidelines.

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For me, the pricing and “newness” have made febuxostat out of the realm of options. Of course, for gouties who cannot tolerate allopurinol, it is very MUCH an option. So there is little to debate. For me, unless a drug has been around for 10 years or more I must consider it “experimental” and experimental products have a place only if there is no tried and true alternatives.

As I have seen the the product evolve, what has happened is much what I would have expected and that included MUCH publicized and amplified side effects of allopurinol, a drug judged innocuous for decades. But little by little the liist of Uloric side effects is growing and at the current rate, it might be soon judged a riskier drug than allopurinol.

But again, until it loses patent protection and starts being priced at the same price as allopurionol there cannot be much of a debate as to which is better.

I think a reasonable analogy MIGHT eventually be the NSAIDS that were used to treat joint pain like ibuprofen, aspirin, naproxyn were all wonder drugs until they lost patent protection and were pooh-poohed by the medical profession as soon as COX-2 inhibitors hit the scene. Immensely expensive, the new drugs (like Vioxx and Bextra) were touted as the new SUPER aspirin, gentle on the stomach and marvellous at pain relief,  and sold and prescribed at huge markups for several years…and then the patients started having extra heart attacks and strokes and poof went almost all the Cox-2 inhibitors.

A new expensive drug is always WONDERFUL…until it ain't.

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