What should patients expect during treatment with JAK2 inhibitors?

What should patients expect during treatment with JAK2 inhibitors?

We hope to expect that they would derive benefit and quickly. You know, some of these therapies do reduce the spleen by quite a bit and do reduce the symptoms by a significant amount. It's not perfect for every single patient. And that's why we have the ability to either alter and sequence JAK2 inhibitors versus enrolling them onto potential clinical trials.

But I do tell them to expect that as we start a new therapy, particularly JAK2 inhibitors, I try to see my patients on a more frequent basis upfront and then space out the appointments later on. What I want to make sure is that the JAK2 inhibitors don't cause too much harm to the patients, particularly with the blood counts getting lower.

There may be a lot of dose modifications in the early first couple of weeks for starting a JAK2 inhibitor, but once it's stabilized, we hope that the patients can sustain use of a JAK2 inhibitor for years and derive that benefit.