A Review of Betaseron

From the time I was diagnosed in July 2004 until I got pregnant with my son, I was using Betaseron (interferon beta-1b) to treat my MS.  So I was on it for 7 and a half years, with a year break in there when I was pregnant with my daughter.

It is a subcutaneous injection, meaning it just gets injected into your fat layer, that you do every other day.  It is an immuno-suppressant, suppressing your immune system so that it won't attack your myelin sheath and thus preventing the progression of the disease.  Whenever I came in contact with anyone who was sick I was sure to get it. 

The most common side effects of the drug are flu-like symptoms.  For the first six months or so that I took this drug I felt like I had the flu.  I felt like I had a fever, you know, the groggy, head full of cotton feeling.  And my muscles ached all over.  I remember my Dad coming into my room at night and rubbing my back and legs because I couldn't sleep.  But after the first few months it went away and I never had any side effects after that except for injection-site reactions.    

You inject yourself in one of eight places, rotating to a different area every night. 

I never did the arms, because mine are so skinny that I don't really have much of a fat layer and they just hurt too much.  My legs hurt a lot too, but I didn't want to cut out too many sites, so I just grit my teeth and did my legs anyways.  So I rotated between 6 injection areas.  The sites became bruised and swollen.  So it was a little embarrassing when I went swimming because of the bruises on my thighs.  I even had someone ask me once if I was being abused! 

It was really hard for me to inject myself.  When I lived at home I had my mom do it.  Then I went away to college and I had to do it myself.  After I got married, my husband did it for me.  Luckily, they have this wonderful contraption called the Auto-Injector.

It means that instead of you having to insert the needle into your own skin, you can load the syringe into this gun and push the trigger and it will shoot the needle into you and then push the medicine into you as well.  It was a life saver!  Of course, even with it, I would have it all loaded and aimed and ready and sit there saying to myself, "Okay, Hannah, on three.  One, Two, THREE!... Okay, on three.  One, two, THREE!"  I would do this sometimes for over an hour before I would finally just do it.  I got better at it as time went on, but it still never got easy. 

Betaseron is a Pregnancy Class C drug, meaning they really don't have many studies on whether it affects babies.  But my neurologist at the time that I got pregnant with my daughter said that he had had quite a few patients get pregnant while on it, stay on it through pregnancy, and breastfeed while on it.  So I got off of it as soon as I suspected that I was pregnant, and I did take it while breastfeeding my daughter.  My daughter is perfectly healthy, but everyone needs to use their own judgement when making important decisions about medications during pregnancy and breastfeeding. 

My neurologist told me that Betaseron has a 30% reduced relapse rate.  I averaged a relapse about every 2 years while on Betaseron.  My neurologist did not like that.  So after my son was born he recommended I switch to a different treatment, so I will be doing posts on the new drug, Tecfidera, soon.