A drug that stops the immune system from attacking a newly transplanted heart also increases the risk of life-threatening infections in some patients, researchers report.The drug, daclizumab (marketed as Zenapax), has already proven successful in kidney transplants and works by blocking immune cells that attack foreign tissue. And in a trial that included 434 heart transplant patients, the drug did decrease the rate of rejection, say researchers reporting in the June 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.Only 25.5 percent of the patients who got daclizumab experienced rejection in the first six months after the surgery, compared to 41.3 percent of those who got a placebo, according to the study, which was funded by the drug’s maker, Roche Laboratories.However, six of the patients placed on the drug died of infections. No such deaths occurred in the placebo group.
