In 1974, in Nature, we hypothesized that removal of cytokines can be effective in the treatment of certain inflammatory diseases, e.g., rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We call this approach anticytokino-therapy. Later it was shown that neutralization of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), interferon alpha (IFN-α), interferon gamma (IFN-γ), and interleukin 6 (IL-6), leads to a good therapeutic effect. Anticytokinotherapy is currently used around the world for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, and other Th-1-mediated inflammatory diseases. Pro-inflammatory cytokines have also been found in other conditions (myocardial infarctions, strokes, chronic pain syndromes, etc.). This leads us to believe that hyper- production of pro-inflammatory cytokines forms a basis of a variety of pathological conditions and represents a uniform response of the organism to a wide variety of insults in any part of the body. Thus, we propose to add monoclonal antibodies to (or other blockers of) pro-inflammatory cytokines to the treatment regimens for myocardial infarctions, strokes, and possibly other Th-1-mediated diseases.
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