Treatment
Until the 2000s, treatment of Fabry disease targeted the symptomatic effects.
In 2001, two Enzyme Replacement Therapies (ERTs) were released which attempt to replace the deficient enzyme by means of infusion. The drugs are expensive, with an annual cost of approximately $200,000 US per patient, and that constitutes a barrier to successful treatment for many patients around the world. Enzyme replacement therapy is not a cure, but can allow improved metabolism and partially prevent disease progression, as well as potentially reversing some symptoms.
Pain associated with Fabry disease can be partially alleviated by ERT, but pain management regimens may also include analgesics, anticonvulsants, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
Read more about this topic: Fabry Disease
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“To me, nothing can be more important than giving children books, It’s better to be giving books to children than drug treatment to them when they’re 15 years old. Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn’t have to put them in prisons?”
—Fran Lebowitz (20th century)
“Judge Ginsburg’s selection should be a model—chosen on merit and not ideology, despite some naysaying, with little advance publicity. Her treatment could begin to overturn a terrible precedent: that is, that the most terrifying sentence among the accomplished in America has become, “Honey—the White House is on the phone.””
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“I feel that any form of so called psychotherapy is strongly contraindicated for addicts.... The question “Why did you start using narcotics in the first place?” should never be asked. It is quite as irrelevant to treatment as it would be to ask a malarial patient why he went to a malarial area.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)