Curcumin cyclosporine

Chueh et al. have demonstrated that curcumin enhances the immunosuppressive activity of cyclosporine in rat cardiac allografts and in mixed lymphocyte reactions. Their study demonstrated for the first time the effectiveness of curcumin as a novel adjuvant immunosuppressant with cyclosporine both in vivo and in vitro. The immunosuppressive effects of curcumin were studied in rat heterotrophic cardiac transplant models, using Brown-Norway hearts transplanted to WKY hosts. In the Brown-Norway-to-WKY model, curcumin alone significantly increased the mean survival time, to 20.5 to 24.5 days as compared with 9.1 days in nontreated controls. The combination of curcumin and subtherapeutic doses of cyclosporine further prolonged the mean survival time to 28.5 to... 

The beneficial effect of curcumin in preventing the acute renal failure and related oxidative stress caused by chronic administration of cyclosporine was examined in rats (Tirkey et al. 2005). Curciunin administered concurrently with for 21 days effectively attenuated cyclosporine induced nephrotoxicity through its antioxidant activity as revealed by markedly countered elevated levels of TEARS, attenuated renal dysfunction, and increased levels of antioxidant enzymes. 

Tirkey, N., Kaur, G., Vij, G., and Chopra, K. 2005. Curcumin, a diferuloylmethane, attenuates cyclosporine-induced renal dysfunction and oxidative stress in rat kidneys. BMC Pharmacol, 5 15. 

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