What is the Treatment for Autoimmune Liver Disease?

Autoimmune liver disease is a disease or disorder that occurs when the human body’s immune system attacks the liver. This disease is also known as autoimmune hepatitis and this happens when there is unusual response against a person’s liver causing inflammation of the liver.

This disease can lead to other serious medical conditions such as Cirrhosis and must be treated or cured as soon as the symptoms or signs are detected. But do you know what is the best treatment for autoimmune liver disease? If not and if you are interested to find out, then please go through the following given information:What is the Treatment for Autoimmune Liver Disease?

The goal of the treatment for autoimmune hepatitis must be to either slow or stop the body’s immune system from attacking the liver. This may slow the progress of the disease to a large extent.

Medications to Control Immune System

  • Prednisone: most of the doctors prescribe an initial high dosage of this drug to the people who have this liver disease called autoimmune hepatitis. The disease often reoccurs if the dosage of this drug is stopped. But it can cause a lot of side effects like diabetes, broken bones and thinning bones etc if taken for a long time.
  • Azathioprine: This is another immunosuppressant and is generally given with Prednisone. This drug too has many side effects such as liver damage and even cancer.
  • Some other immuno suppressants include cyclosporine, mycophenolate, tacrolimus etc.

Liver Transplant Treatment

  • The other way of treating this disorder of the liver is by going for a liver transplant. But this way should only be taken if there are no other alternatives left.
  • Sometimes, medications fail to stop or slow down the progression of the attack of the immune system on the liver. In fact in some cases, the patient might develop irreversible scarring which is also called Cirrhosis. This might even lead to failure of the liver and hence the only option remaining for the treatment is liver transplant.
  • In the process of liver transplant, the liver which is diseased has to be removed surgically and replaced by a liver which has been donated by a donor. Mostly, liver donors are deceased persons who do not have the requirement of their liver anymore.
  • But in the case when the organ donor is a living person, only a small part of the healthy liver is donated.