Now, with the combination of cyclophosphamide and prednisone, more than 90% of Wegener’s patients respond to treatment, and 75% enter a disease remission. For example, before the introduction of cyclophosphamide in the treatment of granulomatosis with polyangiitis in the 1970s, Wegener’s was almost invariably a fatal illness, even with high doses of steroids.
After reading through the many possible side–effects, a reasonable person might conclude that the treatment appears worse than the disease it is intended to treat! We emphasize, however, that for some forms of vasculitis that do not respond to steroids ( prednisone) alone, cyclophosphamide may be a life–saving medicine. In this section, we review the side–effects of cyclophosphamide. However, the doses of cyclophosphamide used to treat vasculitis are still high enough to cause a significant number of side–effects, and the drug must be used with great caution. In general, much lower doses of cyclophosphamide are used to treat vasculitis than are used to treat cancer. Thus, the medicine is very effective in the treatment of immunologically–mediated diseases, including some forms of vasculitis. It was discovered that - in addition to its usefulness in cancer - cyclophosphamide also has a significant ability to suppress the immune system.
Cyclophosphamide is one of a number of medications first developed as a chemotherapy drug (a medication used in the treatment of cancer). Cyclophosphamide, also called Cytoxan, is classified as a “cytotoxic agent”, because it has a toxic effect on many types of cells (“good” cells as well as “bad”).
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