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WEDNESDAY, Aug. 24 (HealthDay News) -- A new immunosuppressive drug can keep transplanted kidneys working, without many of the toxic side effects of current medications, researchers say.
Investigators reporting in the Aug. 25 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine say the drug belatacept worked just as well as a standard medication, cyclosporine, in preserving kidney function.
It also avoided the side effects that come from long-term use of cyclosporine, including high blood pressure, high cholesterol and damage to the body's immune system.
"The results of this study on the safety and effectiveness of belatacept were as good as we could hope for from the first trial of this new class of drugs in human transplant recipients," co-author Dr. Christian P. Larsen, director of the Emory Transplant Center at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, said in a prepared statement.
"This arguably is among the most important new classes of immunosuppressive drugs to be evaluated since cyclosporine was introduced more than 20 years ago," he added.
The study, supported by Bristol-Myers Squibb, the maker of belatacept, involved 218 patients at 22 centers in the United States, Canada and Europe between March 2001 and December 2003.
Preclinical research was conducted with primates at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, and it also showed belatacept was as effective as cyclosporine in preventing rejection of kidney transplants while avoiding toxic side effects, the authors said.
Belatacept works by blocking a signal in the body that would initiate an immune response against a transplanted organ. By selectively blocking this signal, doctors can prevent organ rejection while allowing the body to continue fighting other infections.
More information
The National Institutes of Health has more about kidney transplantation (www.nlm.nih.gov ).
-- Dennis Thompson
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