immunosuppression
- n lowering the body's normal immune response to invasion by foreign substances; can be deliberate (as in lowering the immune response to prevent rejection of a transplanted organ) or incidental (as a side effect of radiotherapy or chemotherapy for cancer)
- At best, though, immunosuppression is a blunderbuss approach that also leaves the body unshielded against lethal germs and sometimes apparently cancer.
- Starzl stopped operating while he and his colleagues worked on a less hazardous method of immunosuppression, using antilymphocyte serum or globulin extracted from horses into which .
- Serum that inhibits the production and action of lymphocytes, the cells responsible for rejection, may cause severe reactions; immunosuppression, which is now the mainstay of .