One of the most important aspects of protecting your transplant is the medications prescribed to you. By weakening or reducing your immune system’s responses to foreign material, anti-rejection medications reduce your immune system’s ability to reject a transplanted organ. These drugs also allow you to maintain enough immunity to prevent overwhelming infection.
Darnell Waun, a nurse and liver transplant recipient, talks about how to manage your transplant medications.
Anti-rejection medications work in different phases of the immune response to minimize side effects and produce effective immunosuppression. Clinical immunosuppression usually occurs in three phases: induction, maintenance and anti-rejection.
Learn more about each of these post-transplant immunosuppressants: