How does it change a patients life when they e not on immunosuppressive drugs?
Dr. Sachs: The same immunosuppressive drugs that have kept people alive with the transplant also have caused problems. Everybody has a weaker immune system and therefore, is more susceptible to infection, to viral or to bacterial infections, as well as to cancer. But in addition, different patients have different side effects from these drugs and some of them have renal failure, some complain of warts, some of them will have problems with loss of bone. It depends on the drug and it depends on the patient, but none of these drugs are without side effects. Explain to me what happens during a bone marrow transplant? Dr. Sachs: The reason the procedure is more difficult up front is that we have to eliminate the existing immune system first in order to train the new immune system to consider the donor as self. During that period between eliminating the mature cells that were already there and new cells forming, the patient is quite susceptible to infections for a couple of weeks. We keep th
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