So I had my 1st dose of a biologic yesterday. It was 1ml injected into my stomach. I only need to do this once every 8 weeks and it blocks a protein in my immune system from working. But wouldn’t it leave the body after a couple of days? How can it have such an everlasting effect?
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A substance can be engineered to be very resistant to the mechanisms that would see it degraded and/or excreted. The details are very complicated, but ultimately it’s all a matter of chemistry.
Also, unlike what the other commenter here says, this effect is *not* necessarily due to effects that persist a long time after the medication is cleared from the body. For instance, when people are given ocrelizumab, another biologic that causes your B cells to die, it is only given every 6 months and is detectable in recipients’ blood pretty much all the way up to the next dose.
E: on top of being made to resist clearance, some drugs are simply so potent that they continue to achieve their practical effect even as they are cleared down to much lower concentrations than the initial dose.
Am scientist working in a lab that develops assays like the ocrelizumab one.
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