When I first heard of the medication Ondansetron, I couldn’t help but think about how its name sounded like a character from the Transformers movies. While this medication doesn’t fight space aliens or have a special effects budget, it does hold the capacity to TRANSFORM lives.

How might you ask?

Methotrexate is a low-cost medication used to control joint inflammation in kids with JA. While highly effective, patients using methotrexate commonly experience the side effect of nausea. Nausea affects all facets of a child’s life from their ability to participate in school, to their family life at home, ultimately contributing to a decreased quality of life.

In other specialties like oncology and gastroenterology, Ondansetron is prescribed as a premedication right from the very first methotrexate dose, to reduce the likelihood and intensity of nausea. Unfortunately, despite that approximately 50% of kids prescribed methotrexate for JA treatment experience nausea, ondansetron is unavailable for JA patients as a premedication. Currently, ondansetron is only able to be prescribed for JA patients after a child begins experiencing methotrexate-induced nausea. However, by this time, ondansetron’s anti-nausea effects may not be as good as if it was started earlier. If the nausea cannot be resolved, this may lead to the child or youth needing to switch to alternative JA treatments.

While not a world-saving robot movie character, when prescribed as a premedication for methotrexate-induced nausea in JA treatment, Ondansetron can TRANSFORM lives. Allowing kids to get back to being kids by reducing the impact of nausea on their lives and their families.

Advocacy for prescription guideline change requires evidential support from research like the current Ondansetron Premedication Trial in Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (OPT-JIA), and studies like this require your participation to ensure there will be reliable trial results.

Here’s how you can get involved:

1. Ask about the OPT-JIA study at your next clinic appointing to see if you’re eligible to enroll
2. Reach out to info@cassieandfriends for more information about the study
3. Click HERE to learn about even more ways you can get involved in research