Variety on immunomodulators, which specifically supresses the immunological response.
Administration of immunosuppressive medications or immunosuppressants is the main method of deliberately induced immunosuppression, in optimal circumstances, immunosuppressive drugs are targeted only at any hyperactive component of the immune system.
People with previous cancer who require immunosuppression are not more likely to have a recurrence, throughout its history, radiation therapy has been used to decrease the strength of the immune system. Dr. Joseph Murray of Brigham and Women's Hospital, was given the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 for work on immunosuppression.
Immunosuppressive drugs have the potential to cause immunodeficiency, which can cause increased susceptibility to opportunistic infections and decreased cancer immunosurveillance.
Immunosuppressants may be prescribed when a normal immune response is undesirable, such as in autoimmune diseases.
Steroids were the first immunosuppressant identified, but its side-effects limited its use, the more specific azathioprine was identified in 1960, but it was the discovery of ciclosporin in 1980 (together with azathioprine) that allowed significant expansion of transplantation to less well-matched donor-recipient pairs as well as broad application to lung transplantation, pancreas transplantation, and heart transplantation.
After an organ transplantation, the body will nearly always reject the new organ(s) due to differences in human leukocyte antigen between the donor and recipient. As a result, the immune system detects the new tissue as "foreign", and attempts to remove it by attacking it with white blood cells, resulting in the death of the donated tissue, immunosuppressants are given as an attempt to prevent this rejection; the side-effect is that the body becomes more vulnerable to infections and malignancy.
