Hello beautiful ladies,
I have studied and read every article and watched every video with regards to Ibrance and even talked to a Pfizer Rep and looked at their first, second and 3rd trial studies on their website and it appears that Ibrance either works for you or it doesn’t. No matter if you take 125mg, 100mg or 75 mg. It is an extremely toxic medicine that plays huge havoc on our immune system!
With the current three-week on and one week off schedule, a significant number of patients develop grade 3 or higher degree of neutropenia and require dose reduction and sometimes discontinuation. This potentially compromises the efficacy of the drug.
In addition, as the half-life of palbociclib is 27 hours, 1 week break with the standard 3 weeks on and 1 week off dosing schedule could potentially lead to recovery of Rb phosphorylation during the off week. Hence, the investigators propose a 5 days on and 2 days off schedule each week without any weeks off drug.
Although the cumulative doses each 28-day cycle is roughly the same with this schedule compared to conventional dosing, the bone marrow is not exposed to the drug continuously for 21 days and rather gets frequent breaks from therapy.
The investigators hypothesize that the 5 days on and 2 days off schedule is more tolerable with less frequent high grade neutropenia and dose interruption/reduction. In addition, this schedule also provides for a more continuous drug delivery to the patient since there is not a week's break in therapy, which could ultimately prove to be more efficacious.
I’m on 100 mg and this is the schedule I have been on and it has worked fabulously so far for well over a year. If my next scan comes back without progression my oncologist promised I may go down to 75 mg, which I had wanted to do from the very start! In my opinion sometimes less is more and it will greatly improve my quality of life!
Remember to be kind to yourself, love yourself!
Much love,
Miriam