Question-and-Answer Session
Thank you madam. [Operator Instructions]. And your first question comes from the line of Brian Abrahams [ph] with Oppenheimer. Please proceed.
Unidentified Analyst
Hi guys, Thanks for taking my questions Just a question on the Kuvan launch, you mentioned that... it sounds like a vast majority of the patients on both commercial therapy and those that are on the long term extensions studies are remaining on treatment. I was just wondering, if you could give us a sense of some of the reasons why the patients to drop out, did drop out, if there are any...if there is any clear pattern to some of the issues there, whether it be compliance or side effects or reimbursement that you might be able to address going forward?
Stephen Aselage - Senior Vice President, Global Commercial Development
I think, there is a couple of different ways to answer the question. Maybe a good place to start would be the patients who dropped out during the study itself. And then I will ask Emil to add to what I say, but my understanding there were some of the patients because the study was set up for just to test those with one day and eight days. Our response tests, we ended up having some patients and who initially looked like responders, but who were not true responders. So it was fairly predictable that they would drop off with longer therapy, became clear that they weren't really responders.
We've had very few patients drop offs, relative to side effects, we've had hand a handful, that I have heard about. They have had headaches or some type of GI disturbance that have made them go off therapy, some of those have come back on, some of those have not back on. What we do see is in the initial period in the first 90 days of therapy, we see patients going on and off therapy on a more regular basis. It seems like once they have been on for three months or so, they've stabilized. They understand what the drug's going to do, the diets become more standard, it's not shifting.
There are fewer complications in their life and they basically seem to be pretty stable. But in that first initial period, we have patients who want to change there diets without the physicians approval. We have physicians looking at the patient response in different ways and it tends to be a little more unstable in those first couple of months on the therapy. Let me caution [ph] and see if Emil would like to add anything to that.
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