Exact Answer: Around 6 Weeks
An antibody therapy mostly used to treat certain major diseases like cancer, lymphoma, leukemia, etc., is known as Rituxan. The Rituxan is the medicine containing the medication of rituximab, which is a monoclonal antibody. A lot of people have a misconception that Rituxan is chemotherapy. But in reality, it is not chemotherapy. Rather it is an antibody therapy.
When major diseases like cancer and leukemia are out of control, then this therapy is used for the treatment. This therapy works in different ways, finding the parent cells, and attacking them, from where cancer starts. It is a slow meditative process, and smoothly it slows down and stops the growth of the cancer cells, present in the body.
How Long After Rituxan Take To Work?
| Effective After Treatment For | 6 to 8 weeks |
| Rituxan effective For Arthritis | 12 weeks |
As the therapy is not a sudden effective process, hence it takes some time to work and create an effect. Normally, in most patients, the effect after the therapy starts around 6 weeks. While treating a major disease like cancer or lymphoma, the therapy may also create some complications. These complications include fungal diseases, dizziness, having fever, chills, shaking of the body, bacterial effects, and some viral infections like hepatitis B or C.
But there is nothing to panic, after having these side effects. As the therapy is a little powerful one, it sometimes affects the immune system. After taking this therapy regularly for some specific amount of time, it suppresses the immune system, and these side effects are the outcomes of it. And, once one finds any of these complications, one must require immediate attention and should be treated as soon as possible.
Once your treatment is initiated, it would take some time to show the results. If with a greater cause, the medication works out, then probably it would take around six weeks, to show some better results. Sometimes, it also takes much more time than this assigned time for the therapy to show results. But after the therapy, it is seen in the maximum cases that, patients feel week and start feeling dizzy every time.
As the medication process helps the immune system to fight cancer cells and destroy them. Simultaneously, the immune system also takes itself on grant while this treatment. Therefore, these complications are seen, and sometimes it takes a little longer time after the therapy to recover in a better way.
Why Does It Take So Long For Rituxan To Work?
As a powerful meditative, the doses of Rituxan also have some different issues. It is a single agent, which is given after every 8 weeks, for a total dosage of 12 doses. And, if the therapy starts working, then the doses would start showing results with the completion of half of the dosage. But after the completion also, the therapy can show some side effects, from which some are short term and some are long term.
The short-term side effects include irritation, itching, nausea, fever, vomiting, fatigue, headache, or skin rash. But the long-term side effects include dry cough, decreased vision, neck veins being dilated, extreme tiredness, or weakness, blurred eye vision, eye pain, or hair loss. However, it is mostly with the pemphigus patients that, it is seen having hair loss after this Rituxan treatment. But it is also undeniable to have a side effect in this before this case.
One should also get his or her blood tested before getting this treatment. Because one has to take this medication for a little longer period of time. Hence, during this treatment, some kidney problems also arise, which can further lead the patient to death. Hence, precautionary measures should be taken.
However, with different diseases, the treatment timing of the Rituxan drug varies completely. While cancer or leukemia patients have some improvements after 6 to 8weeks. The same timing increases with rheumatoid arthritis patients. Most rheumatoid arthritis patients feel that it takes almost 16 weeks for them to get some relief in the amount of pain and inflammation after the Rituxan treatment.
Conclusion
Hence, this chimeric monoclonal antibody Rituxan or rituximab targets against the CD20, which are already present on the surface region of the B cells. Therefore, it slowly acts by depleting it to normalcy while sparing the plasma cells. So, with treating all these lethargic diseases it almost takes 6 to 8 weeks for the therapy to show some positive results.
Although there are some complications and side effects after taking the therapy and medication, still it works on cancer, leukemia, and rheumatoid arthritis patients well. And, if proper treatment is done and care is taken well, with a span of 2 months, the patients can expect some great outcomes.