Cyclosporine w/o ATG

[RosaleeS]

Hello everyone
Has anyone had success with just taking Cyclosporine alone? Our hematologist thought this would be good to start out with before going on ATG. He thought this might be successful and not as hard on my mother. Just wondered if anyone else had success with just taking cyclosporine. Also would like to know if many of you got infections easily after taking cyclosporine.
Thanks
Dave son of rosalee

[Hopeful]

Hi Dave,

Here is an interesting abstract about IST for older patients. Perhaps your mother's doctor can get the whole article for you as it seems very relevant to your concerns:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19062343

I did not notice an increase in my infection rate while on high-dose cyclosporine. However, it is important to take extra precautions (increased hand washing, wear a mask if necessary, avoid crowds, avoid sick people, etc). The concern is that if she got an infection, in could quickly become a lot more serious because of her compromised immune system.

[RosaleeS]

Hopeful,

Thanks so much for your reply. That's good to hear about the Cyclosporine. We have been worried that she might start getting too many infections. We also didn't like the idea of doing the ATG as mom and I thought this might be too strong for her to take, but that article that mentioned the 70 year old subjects only taking a 50% dosage of ATG and having good success gave us hope. Using a 50% dosage for people > 70 makes sense to both of us. We will discuss doing this with her hematologist if Cyclosporing alone isn't successful.

Thanks so much,
Dave