The Rising Cost Of Prescription Drugs including those for Myasthenia Gravis

As lawmakers continue to focus on the price increases of the now infamous Epipen, a national investigation led by TEGNA Media’s investigation team reveals the medical device is merely one of at least 100 drugs that have increased in price by 70 percent or more since 2012.

Brian Novak is holding $1,800 worth of insulin in his fridge.  
The increases continue to impact everyone from diabetics to teens with rheumatoid arthritis, and most involve drugs approved by the FDA more than

Recall of Pyridostigmine Leaves MG Patients Scrambling in China

by Yin Yijun
Chinese people living with the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis (MG) are running out of medicines they consider life-saving after drugs made by the sole domestic supplier were recalled.

State-owned Shanghai Zhongxi Sunve Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. is the only supplier of the medicine pyridostigmine bromide, which MG patients take daily to keep their symptoms — such as muscle

Study Concludes Surgery Benefits Myasthenia Gravis Patients

Gil I. Wolfe, MD

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine addresses a question doctors have sought to clarify for decades: whether a surgery conducted since the 1940s benefits the patients it targets.

The study to be published August 11 (available online on August 10 at 5 p.m.) found that surgical removal of the thymus gland from patients with myasthenia gravis, a rare autoimmune disease that affects neuromuscular function, provides significant benefit in patients who do not have a chest tumor.

Myasthenia gravis (MG) results from an immune-mediated

Consensus Guidelines for the Treatment of Myasthenia Gravis Discussion

by Tori Rodriguez
Myasthenia gravis (MG) is estimated to affect up to 60 000 Americans and over 700 000 people worldwide, though rates are likely even higher because the disease remains underdiagnosed. The prognosis for patients with MG has improved in recent years, due largely to the increasing use of immunomodulating therapies.

However, despite widespread agreement on the use of many MG treatments, there is still no universal standard of care to help guide clinicians. Because of the heterogeneous nature of the disease, no particular treatment approach is optimal for all patients with MG, and most physicians do not treat it often enough to be familiar with the full range of treatment options. Additionally, the “few successful clinical trials in MG have limited generalizability, and even the best of clinical trials cannot balance the use of different available and accepted treatment modalities in a disease as heterogeneous as MG,” explained Donald B. Sanders, MD, a professor of neurology at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina.

As a result of these factors, few “treatments used for MG have Class I evidence of efficacy, and it is

Myasthenia Gravis 'Cured' Using Stem Cell Transplant

It is far from being a mainstream treatment but seven patients with severe myasthenia gravis who received autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplants have experienced long-term remission that has been symptom and treatment free for many years.

Harold Atkins told Medscape News, "We are always reluctant to talk about this type of disease being cured, but these patients have all been disease free without any

Two New Antibodies Found That Possibly Cause Myasthenia Gravis

An article at News-Medial.net discusses a study that has found two new antibodies that may be the cause of myasthenia gravis in some patients.

A recent nationwide study of patients with myasthenia gravis is helping to determine the incidence

Stem Cell Therapy Used For Long Term Remission of Myasthenia Gravis

Stem cell therapy has been successfully used to to treat severe myasthenia gravis. An article appearing in Science Daily makes note of  report on seven cases of severe myasthenia gravis (an autoimmune disease characterized by severe muscle weakness) suggests that autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (when a patient's

"Cut The Sugar" and Get Healthy - Great New Recipes

Cut The Sugar by Ella Leche

Do you ever just get hankering for something sweet? It can be overwhelming, can't it? For me it's usually chocolate. Just down the hall from my office is a vending machine. Sometimes I'll get up and begin the short walk but I'll stop short. I realize that eating too much sugar is associated with all sorts of conditions. Like diabetes, weight gain, heart disease, fatigue, depression and autoimmune disease.

I'm always trying to improve my health and eat better. One of the reasons that I can abstain from visiting the vending machine is because of a book that I read,“Cut the Sugar: You’re Sweet enough Cookbook” by Ella Leche.


Leche began having health problems and eventually was diagnosed with the same