Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives Anti TNF and other biological medications Women & Remicade

Wow, after reading this thread, it's enough for me to stay away from remicade! Hope humira's not like that....With enbrel, I've been fine...

I guess the thing to remember is that each of us has had a different experience, which just underscores the idea that any med/treatment will affect us all differently. It just keeps coming back to that.

Hugs,

It is not THAT bad, nothing overly shocking, just a difference.

Amy:)

I hope this will be helpful -animation for the menstrual cycle:

http://www.sumanasinc.com/webcontent/anisamples/majorsbiology/ovarianuterine.html

Kat the lining you're referring to - probably the endometrium which is uterine lining that is regulated during the cycle and then shed during menstruation- take a look through the animation in the other link and see if that is helpful.

the links I listed suggest that TNF alpha is present and would have functional role/roles in the ovary. I know there is a body of literature on TNF alpha in the uterus also, but I do not have any details at hand. I don't know of a less technical source that puts all this information together - I've spent a good bit of time looking this afternoon. Many interactions between hormones, cytokines, the immune system, the central nervous system which controls aspects of reproduction, and the ovary and uterus probably still need to be mapped out.

It must NOT be an "all or none" effect - as there are women who get pregnant on the tnf blockers and who go on to have full normal pregnancies - suggesting that fertility and ovarian function could persist in the face of tnf blockade. I don't know if there are any more subtle changes to ovarian function and consequently to fertility - your combined observations on changes to your cycles suggest that there might be.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I think I remember seeing something about TNF blockade being used to HELP fertility (in the presence of endometriosis??????) I will take a look to see.

Sometimes a hormone or cytokine can have an inhibitory effect on a system (like the reproductive tract) at ONE level within the system and a stimulatory effect at ANOTHER level within the same system. So a treatment that BLOCKs a cytokine could have a complex outcome - could stimulate at the first level and inhibit at the second level. It can sometimes be difficult to tease out competing effects.

Perhaps your combined observations HERE on the changes to your menstrual cycles could be followed in the future to give clinical research answers on the roles of TNFalpha in the control of the reproductive cycle and fertility. If you and Amy go back and report this whole thread to Dr. I, perhaps this can come to be followed up on!

Amy - yes tell Dr. I! the observations this group has made on changes to the menstrual cycle could be targeted for larger scale analysis.

Hmmm...another good PhD topic.... Keep the ideas coming...

YES Megan - is this close enough to your field?

Yep. My first masters was in anxiety levels in relation to the different phases of the menstrual cycle, and premenstrual dysphoric disorder; using fMRI to study what was going on in the brain. Really interesting stuff, but because of the darn AS monster, I had to leave that program, but that's how I ended up in epidemiology. Which can lead to any number of health fields. I've always had a big interest in women's health stuff - it's so underrepresented in medical studies.

Good morning, ladies. I just wanted to let you know that I've emailed a link to this discussion to Dr. Inman. Also, I think I'm going to open this discussion up to women on any biologic, instead of limiting it to Remicade. Let's see if we've all noticed the same things.

Many hugs,