ABSTRACT
At the stage of knowledge, autoimmune diseases are clinically frustrating; etiology is not completely understood and specific cure is lacking. The use of plasma exchange (PE) in autoimmune diseases started as an empirical approach to the treatment of rare and fulminating conditions; it has shown its effectiveness in many of these conditions and has been extended into many diseases not only as a therapeutic measure but also as a means for investigating disease pathogenesis. In this chapter, the authors divide the diseases in which PE was tried into four main groups: autoantibody-mediated disorders, immune complex diseases, neurologic autoimmune diseases, and other conditions suspected to be autoimmune. The extensive literature required us to restrict their analysis to certain topics; those the author has chosen to emphasize concern treatment modalities with newly discovered immunological mechanisms. The authors discuss modalities, i.e., plasma exchange, cyclosporin A, total lymphoid irradiation, dietary manipulation, levamisole, antiidiotypes, intravenous gamma globulin, lymphocyte deletion, and pulse therapy with methyl-prednisolone.
