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Thursday, May 9, 2013

IVIg and/or Intraplids

One of the challenges of needing a Immunological protocol for my FET cycle is trying to get my insurance to agree to the medications and cover them. Even though the field of reproductive immunology has been around for a long time it's not widely recognized as anything other then experimental, even though thousands of woman have been helped by this protocol to go on to have healthy pregnancies.

Right now my stress level has been going through the roof trying to get my insurance to say yes to covering IVIg IV infusions. I have a feeling they will not and I will have to go to plan b Intraplids. Dr. K feels Intraplids are not as effective as they are synthetic and not a blood product so in order to do them instead I have to get my RE to prescribe them.

Why do I need this treatment? During my immunology treatments I was found to have elevated levels of the below. It's a good possibility because of this and the blood clotting issue that this is the reason for my infertility and repeated mc. Correcting it should allow me to go on to have a normal pregnancy.

NK assay:
50:1 32.1 should be 15 or less
cd56 9.9 should be 12 or less

Th1/Th2 cytokines:
TNF 44.5 should be 30.6 or less 
IFN 18.9 should be 20.5 or less

In order to lower these levels to prevent them from attacking the embryo they do a IV infusion of a blood product (made from antibodies extracted from the blood plasma) called IVIg (but it's very expensive and not always covered by insurance) or the alternative (but Dr. K won't do it as she feels it's not as effective) is something called Intralipid another IV but it is a synthetic product composed of 10% soybean oil, 1,2% egg yolk phospholipids, 2.25% glycerin and water.

With plan A not looking so promising I hope my RE on Monday's visit will be able to help with setting up Intraplids instead and pray they will be just as effective. I'll probably still have to pay out of pocket for Intraplids but from my research the cost of the medication is significantly lower, hopefully my insurance will at least cover the infusion of it with a nurse.

Would appreciate your prayers that one of these options works out for us soon as well as the rest of the medications so we can start our FET cycle soon. 


UPDATE: Insurance DENIED IVIg so it's on to plan B Intraplids for us - makes me really upset but nothing I can do. We could appeal but that could take forever and still be a no so hopefully Intraplids will work out instead. Will have to trust God to do the rest. 


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