Antibody therapy cuts risk of kidney rejection by 50%.

Kidney transplant recipients are at only half the risk of short-term rejection if they receive a certain type of antibody in addition to standard immune system-suppressing drugs, according to a report in the April 12th issue of the British Medical Journal.

According to an analysis of 8 trials, the addition of anti-interleukin-2 receptor antibodies to patients' therapy cut the incidence of acute graft rejection by 49% in the six months after renal transplantation. Episodes of acute rejection can reduce long-term survival in these recipients by at least 50%. However, immunosuppressive therapy to avoid rejection can increase the risk of infection and cancer.

A total of 1,858 patients, all of whom had been given cyclosporine-based immunosuppressive therapy plus either a placebo or anti-interleukin-2 receptor antibodies were evaluated, reported Dwomoa Adu, MD and colleagues from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England. Patients receiving antibodies against the interleukin-2 receptor had no increase in the level of infection or malignancy after 1year, compared with those given placebo. Furthermore, there were no significant effects of antibody treatment on long-term organ loss and death at1 year, though longer-term studies are required to confirm these findings, the researchers said.

Adu noted that antibody therapy has not been shown to be as effective in liver transplants, so he was unable to generalize the new findings to other transplants. The cost of the antibody treatment is around $3000.