Drug Cuts Cancer Risk After Kidney Transplant

Kaposi's sarcoma, a type of skin cancer often diagnosed in kidney transplant patients, can be eliminated using the same drug that helps stop transplanted kidneys from being rejected, researchers said on Wednesday. The anti-rejection drug sirolimus appears to make the skin cancer disappear, at least among kidney transplant recipients who develop the cancer after their transplant, according to a study of 15 patients. Kaposi's, which causes tumors in tissues below the skin surface, is usually rare. But when the immune system is throttled down, due to drugs that prevent organ rejection or a disease like HIV, it is far more common. Transplant recipients are 500 times more likely to get it than the general population. In the new study, published in this week's edition of The New England Journal of Medicine, patients who developed Kaposi's were taken off cyclosporine, the standard drug for preventing organ rejection, and given sirolimus, which does the same thing. After one month, the Kaposi lesions had begun to disappear in 12 of the 15 volunteers. After three months, they had all disappeared. The research team, led by Giovanni Stallone of the University of Bari in Italy, said sirolimus continued to prevent organ rejection as well.