ABSTRACT
Over the last years an enormous amount of succesful transplantations of vitally important organs in human medicine have been due to the discovery of a new immunosuppressive drug — cyclosporin A (Devaraj et al.,
). This drug is on one hand indispensable from the point of view of immunosuppressive therapy, yet on the other hand, it has side effects. Cyclosporin A is hepatotoxic; it damages the metabolism of bile acids and the production of bile, i.e., processes dependent on adenosine triphosphate. Even in very low concentrations, cyclosporin A damages mitochondrial functions. It inhibits mitochondrial permeability transition (MPT), which is characterized by progressive permeabilization of the inner mitochondrial membrane — from protons, ions, to small proteins, stimulated by osmotic support (Kowaltovski and Vercesi
). Patients living with transplanted hearts require continual complex specialized medical care and
complex therapy for a lifetime. After heart transplantation, patients have to be regularly checked for possible transplant rejection, monitored by immunosuppressive therapy, and need effective prevention and therapy for infectious diseases (Fabián et al.
