Vumerity 101: Uses, Side Effects and Price! (Plus How To Avoid One Of It's Most Common Problems)

What Is Vumerity Used For?

Vumerity Is used to treat different kinds of multiple sclerosis including Clinically Isolated Syndrome, Relapsing-Remitting and Active Secondary Disease in adults.

How Does It Work In The Body?

Ironically, we really don't understand how it works in the body.

We do know that Vumerity is part of fumaric acid family along with Tecfidera.

Vumerity is actually a prodrug. What that means is that Vumerity is not an active drug. When you take it it's broken down in your body to the active component.

Ultimately Vumerity helps MS by lowering inflammation and can be cytoprotective.

But like any medication that lowers inflammation there can be side effects. That's because while too much inflammation can be a bad thing. Inflammation in the beginning is part of a normal, healthy immune system response.

So lowering that response can lead to infection problems down the road.

How Is Vumerity Dosed?

There's a starter dose of 231 mg twice a day for 7 days. If you're tolerating that okay they'll move you to the maintenance dose which is 462 mg twice a day.

These are capsules and are taken by mouth.

What Are The Side Effects? Like we talked about above because you're blocking inflammation that can lead to immune system side effects down the road.

So it's no surprise that the most common side effect for this medication is increased infection rates. And you can see this in up to 60% of users.

The next most common side effect is flushing. Up to 40% of people can experience this.

One thing you can do to minimize the flushing is to take up to 325 mg of non enteric-coated aspirin about a half hour before you take your dose.

The next most common side effects are going to be related to the gastrointestinal tract. Stomach pain can occur in up to 18% of people. Diarrhea can occur in up to 14% of people. And up to 12% of people can experience nausea.

Is Vumerity An Immunosuppressant?

The short answer is no ... it's not USED to suppress the immune system. However, like we discussed above, one of Vumerity’s side effects is possibly lowering your immune system response.

Vumerity Price

Vumerity caught a lot of heat early on when it came onto the market because there was an article talking about how treatment was $88,000 a year.

While Vumerity is expensive they do offer financial assistance and a Quick Start program.

I don't know any patients who are currently on this medication but in a lot of cases these financial programs can help out a lot. In fact a lot more than people realize.

I’ll include a link to their website and the Quick Start program if it's something you and your doctor are interested in looking into.

QuickStart Program :https://www.vumerityhcp.com/content/d...