Hello Tacrolimus

“Who would have thought that all along it wasn’t rejection we needed to worry about; it would be the Great Southern (GTP) share price that’d ultimately kill him.”

Okay, okay, that’s a bad joke but I couldn’t resist. For those of you that are aware of Ben’s relationship with Great Southern (GTP) I’m sure you’ll get it, for those who don’t – it might take too long to explain. Let’s just say, that in a day that could of being disastrous, things actually turned out okay. “Fingers crossed”, as we too often say.

On the health side there are some welcomed developments. Ben’s on the drip and doing well or as Janyne puts it, “he’s full of life and colour”. Of course we won’t know until late Thursday or early Friday, after the blood tests, whether it’s worked or not but all signs are positive at this stage.

I was talking about the ‘balancing act’ in my post yesterday and today the Doctors made some more changes to his medication. They’re out with the Cyclosporin and in with the Tacrolimus. What the? In short, they’ve made some changes to the main immunosuppressant drug Ben’s on. You might recall, ‘immunosuppressants’ are used to prevent the rejection of transplanted organs – in Ben’s case, they stop his body from rejecting the new lungs. I’ve spent a little time on here (the net) reading clinical studies about the difference between both of the drugs. It looks like Tacrolimus, according to what I’ve read, reduces the likelihood of ‘acute rejection’ in transplant recipients. According to wikipedia, Tacrolimus is “more potent than Cyclosporin and has less pronounced side effects”. I’m far from being a Doctor but to me, it sounds as though it’s a good thing.

Here’s an overview of the two drugs and immunosuppressants in general. To find the clinical studies just google "tacrolimus vs cyclosporin" - keep in mind it might take a bit of filtering to find something relevant.

There’s really not a lot else going on. I’ll be back on tomorrow, writing another post and filling you in on where we’re at. It looks like Friday might be the day he gets out. Not a bad present for the weekend.


Paul.