chemotherapy
The treatment of disease by means of chemicals that have a specific toxic effect upon the disease producing microorganisms
(antibiotics) or that selectively destroy cancerous tissue (anticancer therapy).

(12 May 1997)

The abstracts you sight show generally less than the standard 4.5 mg/kg dose for transplants and what matters is not the specific dose but the serum level of the drug for effects or side effect.

You have obviously never tried it on yourself, CyA in any form that is... I did mistakenly say liver when I meant kidney but the rest of what you say is misleading or just wrong.

I believe I did say that CyA is more hardcore than cortisone but works better and when I said that using chemo was brain dead for psoriasis what I meant was using normal definition of the word chemotherapy, instead of one you made up, it makes no sense for treating psoriasis.... I mean what kind of nut would use cancerous tissue destroying chemicals to cure or treat psoriasis.

If you want to disagree with what I say you can but at least take the time to read a dictionary periodically! To keep things understandable we must all be speaking the same kind of English.

And now I still stand by the fact that CyA WILL in any case of psoriasis, make the symptoms go away. Also you can use doses as high as 50 mg/kg ( 10 times what they use in your abstracts) CyA has a half life of 72 hours or less so lets get real... this will stop CD4 T cells that cause the autoimmune reaction leading to psoriasis AND I'll bet you didn't know CyA can be used to generate high levels of antibody against what ever T cell subset you wish, did you? Really, if you have any question about what CyA can or will do call Dr. Borel through Sandoz... he is a very nice man who invented CyA and he is always most helpful in answering any query you may have.... for the information on B cell stimulation and increased antibody titers with CyA speak to Jerry Klaus in London.
( sorry old papers you won't find on Medline but I can fax copies to those who have interest)

Again I did not say it was a great idea to use CyA or cortisone for that matter as either is or can be very damaging to your system. I had a friend of mine bleed to death from her stomach as a result of cortisone injections to stop autoimmune responses. I don't endorse these kinds of meds.

If you will look I have endorsed things as what works for me and I am still clear of even little pink skin since my last little trip to Mexico. I'll make you a deal. Tell me what works for you and I'll tell you what works for me otherwise you can't convince me that you are very smart. So tell me what has made you symptom free right now?

-I don't know where you got it, since there's no cite given, but first and foremost this is *a* definition, not *the* definition.

A more general alternative definition from the eminently respectable Johns Hopkins/Harvard Med backed Intellihealth site, using the Merriam Webster Medical Dictionary could certainly encompass suppression of T cells

http://www.intelihealth.com/cgi-bin/dictionary.cgi?book=Medical&adv=0...

I'll leave most of the rest of it to Dave to respond to, since it's his point anyway and he'll do it better than I. However...

-Three points. Cyclosporine does NOT work better for everyone. Next - as pointed out before, your own definition of chemotherapy is incomplete. Especially in this context. There's the alternative definition given above. And a counter example I've provided before, where the psoralen in PUVA is also considered a chemo, with the entire treatment called photochemotherapy http://pinch.com/skinny?medline=photochemotherapy+psoriasis

Finally, there are cases of psoriasis that are serious enough -up to and including life threatening severe erythrodermic- that it would not take a 'nut' to use chemo even under your limited definition, if it would help. I don't know, maybe you don't realize it, but you really are belittling people suffering from psoriasis by continuing putting down any use of strong meds like this for it, as if it's too insignificant a thing to be worth it. I'm sure we'd all agree that that not all cases should look to such methods (and in fact MOST cases of psoriasis are pretty mild and should only need minimal treatment), but that's far from agreeing that only a 'nut' would consider them for any case of psoriasis.

-I never said that that was chemotherapy, now did I? No. I said that the first thing that comes to mind when the words "psoriasis" and "chemotherapy" come together is methotrexate. And that's because methotrexate is a chemotherapy drug which is ALSO used at low dosages to treat psoriasis.