The Use of Plasmapheresis in Patients with Bronchiectasis with Pseudomonas aeruginosa Infection and Inhibitory Antibodies

What is it about?

Antibodies normally protect people from infection. They bind to bacteria, viruses and fungi, labelling for killing by the immune system. We found that some patients produce too much antibodies to infecting bacteria. In these patients, instead of killing the bacteria the antibody hides the bacteria from the immune system so that the bacteria can grow and cause severe disease. We showed that by removing the antibody from the bloodstream of these patients we could restore the ability of the patients to control their infections and the patients got better.

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Why is it important?

This treatment is very timely. It was used to treat patients with infections that were resistant to most classes of antibiotics that were clinically relevant. This treatment may have widespread use in many different types of infection.