Eli Newman

How does the combination of Allopurinol and Azathioprine impact the progression of Autoimmune Hepatitis for a patient who isn't responding to Azathioprine alone?

Started Dec. 17, 2021

Abstract or project description

Autoimmune Hepatitis is an immune liver disease in which the body attacks its liver cells. If not caught early, it can be life-threatening. The etiology of the disease isn’t well known, but it is believed to be due to a genetic predisposition plus some environmental trigger. Part of the reason why so little is known about the disease is due to the fact that it is rare and usually controllable if caught early enough, and therefore not given much attention. The current treatment plan commonly used is the steroid prednisone and the thiopurine Azathioprine. Both of these drugs used together are not always able to calm down the immune system; between 10-20% of patients don’t respond to Azathioprine. To counteract this, Allopurinol is sometimes used in conjunction with Azathioprine in an effort to change the metabolism of Azathioprine, a process which relatively little is known about. Using Allopurinol and Azathioprine to treat Autoimmune Hepatitis has gone largely unresearched, so relatively little is known about how the combination affects the immune system besides the fact that Allopurinol suppresses the unfavorable metabolic pathway of Azathioprine, causing it to be metabolized and that the process is reasonably effective. This paper aims to shed some light on how the combination of Azathioprine and Allopurinol affect Autoimmune Hepatitis by establishing a system of differential equations modeling the progression of the disease based upon a variety of factors such as the response of the innate immune system, the response of the adaptive immune system, and prescription drugs like Prednisone, Azathioprine, and Allopurinol.