Question: When you find a cure for AS and it will start to work, do you know what will happen to the spine after the medicine has taken action?, will it 'unfuse'?
Keywords: ankylosing, medicine, spine, spondylitis
Keywords: ankylosing, medicine, spine, spondylitis
Hi horseyferret,
That is a great question. It’s very dangerous to give a person medication which will break down their bones, as it might start breaking down all the bones in their body. So it is a very very difficult problem to try to figure out how to target the bone breakdown to just the areas which have undergone fusion.
Another option is to give the patient the new treatment before the bone formation occurs. That way you prevent the bones from fusing. This is still difficult though, as diagnosing AS is very difficult and many patients don’t know what is wrong with them for many years.
That’s why I think it is important to work on this disease – treating it is a very tough problem!
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