Thalidomide is an immunomodulatory medication. It is used to treat a number of cancers and skin conditions. Common side effects include sleepiness, rash, and dizziness. Severe effects include tumor lysis syndrome, blood clots, and peripheral neuropathy. Use in pregnancy may harm the baby, including resulting in malformation.
About Thalidomide in brief
Thalidomide is an immunomodulatory medication. It is used to treat a number of cancers and skin conditions. Common side effects include sleepiness, rash, and dizziness. Severe effects include tumor lysis syndrome, blood clots, and peripheral neuropathy. Use in pregnancy may harm the baby, including resulting in malformation of the limbs. In males who are taking the medication, contraception is essential if the partner could become pregnant. The drug is on the World Health Organization’s List of Essential Medicines. In the United Kingdom it costs the NHS about £1,194 per month as of 2018. This amount in the United States costs about US$9,236 as of 2019. There is a high risk of anemia and blood clotting problems. It can cause severe skin reactions like Stevens–Johnson syndrome. As it kills cancer cells, it can cause tremor, which creates risk of heart attacks, pulmonary hypertension, and changes in heart rhythm. It should be used with caution in people with chronic infections like HIV or hepatitis B. It was first marketed in 1957 in West Germany, where it was available over the counter. Its initial entry into the US market was prevented by Frances Kelsey at the FDA. The birth defects caused by thalidomid led to the development of greater drug regulation and monitoring in many countries. It has been approved for medical use in the U.S. in 1998 and is available as a generic medication.
There are risks of infection via neutropenia, leopenia, and anemia, and risks that blood will not clot via thrombocytopenia and lymphopenia. It may also cause anemia via lack of red cells, which may be irreversible. ThalidomIDE has several cardiovascular adverse effects including heart attacks and pulmonary hypertension. It tends to make people sleepy, which can cause liver damage and atrioventricular block, which causes severe liver damage. The bacterium that causes tuberculosis is related to leprosy. It’s used as a first-line treatment in multiple myeloma in combination with dexamethasone or with melphalan and prednisone, to treat acute episodes of erythema nodosum leprosum, and for maintenance therapy. In children, it has been prescribed for other conditions in children including actinic prurigo and epidermolysis bullosa; the evidence for these uses is weak. In adults, it is recommended only as a third line treatment in graft-versus-host-disease in adults, based on lack of efficacy and side effects observed in clinical trials. It could be helpful in some cases where standard TB drugs and corticosteroids are not sufficient to resolve severe inflammation in the brain, and in children who have been diagnosed with graft versus host disease and aphthous stomatitis in children. It does not work well in people who are allergic to the bacterium.
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This page is based on the article Thalidomide published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
