Why would you suppress the immune system
If the immune system protects the body, why would you want to suppress it?
Doctors prescribe patients immunosuppressants, drugs which suppress the immune system, after the patient has undergone an organ transplant. They do so to prevent the patient’s body from rejecting the organ. Additionally, doctors use immunosuppressants to decrease the affects that autoimmune system diseases have on the body.
Whenever a foreign agent enters the body, it activates he immune system. White blood cells try to rid the body of the foreign particle.
Suppressing the immune system after organ transplant
When a person undergoes an organ transplant, the immune system views the organ as a foreign particle and attacks it. Doctors prescribe immunosuppressants to prevent the immune system from destroying the organ.
Immune system suppression in autoimmune diseases
Doctors also prescribe immunosuppressants to treat the symptoms of auto immune diseases. Autoimmune diseases are diseases in which a persons immune system attacks the body’s organs because it views them as foreign agents. Immunosuppressants suppress the immune system and the symptoms, or affects on the body, of the autoimmune disease decrease.
All in all, doctors suppress the immune system after a person has had an organ transplant and to decrease the symptoms of autoimmune diseases. If they did not prescribe immunosuppressants then the body would reject the organ, in case of people who have undergone an organ transplant, and in cases of autoimmune diseases, the patient would have to suffer the from the symptoms of the autoimmune diseases.