A funny thing happened the other day on the way to the Pulmonary Fibrosis News Forums. In the blink of an eye, everything changed, and off I went to the emergency room at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Virginia. I should start at the beginning. On June 12, I began…
Targeting cell death pathway may offer new strategy for treating IPF
My husband, Donnie, suffered from gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) for several years before the onset of his lung issues, and we were surprised to learn of the connection between GERD and pulmonary fibrosis (PF). While, to my knowledge, the scientific community isn’t 100% certain of that relationship, we do…
GRI Bio‘s experimental oral therapy GRI-0621 (tazarotene) has received orphan drug designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a disease with no known cause that’s marked by inflammation and fibrosis, or scarring, that damages the lungs. The developer…
I recently received my first Rituxan (rituximab) infusion. Most people might think of treatment as starting when the medication enters the IV. But for me and many others, it starts long before that, with paperwork, phone calls, authorizations, appointments, and a level of persistence that we patients rarely get credit…
Familial pulmonary fibrosis (FPF) makes up a notable portion of all cases of interstitial lung disease, disorders marked by scarring in the lungs, and tends to appear differently from non-familial versions of the disease, a large, multicenter study has found. While survival outcomes were similar between the two groups,…
Storytelling is a learning tool as old as time. History is made up of eyewitness accounts and recollections of a certain time or place, often augmented by official records. I’ve seen discussions recently on social media and in the Pulmonary Fibrosis News Forums asking for people to describe the…
Note: This column describes the author’s husband’s own experiences with anti-fibrotic medications. Not everyone will have the same response to treatment. Consult your doctor before starting or stopping a therapy. For those of you who haven’t read this column before, my name is Kylene, and my husband, Donnie, was diagnosed…
The need for naps tends to evolve throughout one’s lifetime. When my kids were babies, it was good to let their young bodies rest midday, giving their parents a break and helping them gradually adjust to longer days. As they got older, they outgrew the need for naps. I had…
Vaccines based on protein fragments unique to the scar-forming cells that drive idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) significantly reduced lung scarring in both mouse models and human cell experiments, according to a study. While the vaccine approach showed promise in mice, advancing it to clinical trials will require patient selection…
