It sounds simple: take less of a drug and you will get less impact from its side effects. But if you think about it, why would this be so? When you lower the dose of your TKI (after first having been stable at a low level of CML for some time, of course) you assume it will still have the same effect as a high one, right? I mean, it hits the baddies just as effectively when it's thinned out, so to speak - otherwise, your PCR would show an upward trend, right? So why would you expect the off-target hits to be any less at a lower dose? They go right along with the targeted hits. I'm probably not being very clear.
I have a visit coming up and this is just the kind of question my onc does NOT ever want to talk about. He gets mad at me instead. And this visit I really, really want to talk rationally about finding a way to stop taking this drug soon, so I need cool-headed ammo. He is very opposed to reducing dose, on principle. But he definitely wouldn't let me quit altogether outside a clinical trial. So I'm trying to see if it's worth it to go to battle over dose reduction. If it could make a difference in the SE's, I would settle for that. But I just can't see the logic. Can anybody explain what I'm asking about?