Immunopharmacology is the study of the use of pharmacological agents as modulators of immune responses. The principal applications are in the use of immunosuppressive agents (i.e., compounds that suppress undesirable immune responses) and immunostimulating agents (i.e., drugs, microorganisms, or biological products that enhance or augment immune responses). Three major indications for immunothe...

In the context of prospective trials of immunosuppressive drugs in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) nephritis, 83 patients were studied with regard to development of herpes zoster. Herpes zoster was found to occur with high frequency (21%) in patients with SLE nephritis treated with immunosuppressive agents. The course of herpes zoster was benign: no deaths occurred and only 2 of the 18 patie...

Medicare is proposing significant revisions to its Part D drug program. The biggest change: the elimination of antidepressants and immunosuppressants as "protected classes" on formularies in 2015 and the removal of antipsychotics in 2016.

Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the liver that is characterized by progressive cholestasis and the development of secondary biliary cirrhosis. There is no widely recognized therapy for this disease, although anti-inflammatory agents (steroids), immunosuppressive agents (methotrexate), anti-fibrotics (colchicine), and choleretic agents (ursodeoxycholic a...

INTRODUCTION Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that affects fertile-age women and of which treatment includes immunosuppressive agents that can affect the gonads. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the frequency of menstrual alterations in lupus patient treated with immunosuppressive agents (ISA). PATIENTS AND METHODS A total of 87 patients, aged < 40 years, were studied. The p...

Whereas the standard immunosuppressive agents foster development of posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorders (PTLDs), the impact of RAD, a macrolide with potent immunosuppressive properties, and other immunosuppressive macrolides on these disorders remains undetermined. We found that RAD had a profound inhibitory effect on in vitro growth of six different PTLD-like Epstein-Barr virus+ lymph...

Exceptionally low acute rejection rates and excellent graft survival can be achieved with cyclosporine and tacrolimus (CNI)-based immunosuppressive protocols that incorporate antiproliferative immunosuppressants and corticosteroids. However, despite short-term success, long-term attrition of graft function and side effects of immunosuppressive agents continue to be significant problems, leaving...

A LTHOUGH small bowel transplantation is the physiologic treatment of the short bowel syndrome, Its clinical implementation awaits development of immunosuppressive regimens that ensure satisfactory control of graft rejection. Agents such as Cy A and corticosteroids are useful for transplantation of most other vascularized organ allografts. However, rejection of the transplanted small intestine ...

Backgrounds/Aims Long-term immunosuppression regimens after liver transplantation (LT) are rarely reported in detail. We aimed to provide information on actual long-term immunosuppression regimens through this cross-sectional study. Methods Our institutional LT database was searched for adult patients who underwent primary LT operation from 2000 to 2016. We identified 3620 live recipients wit...