The Effect of Vitamin A on the Immunosuppressive Action of Cortisone on Skin Homografts in Mice

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Abstract
The use of immunosuppressive steroid therapy in patients having transplant operations is associated with increasing numbers of patients with wound healing problems. Vitamin A is known to prevent some biological effects of steroids, including impaired gain in strength of healing wounds and impaired epithelialization of open wounds. Other effects of steroids are not affected by vitamin A. Before vitamin A can be safely used to promote wound healing in transplant patients having steroid immunosuppressive therapy, it is essential to determine whether the immunosupprressive action could be impaired by vitamin A. A study was designed using skin homografts in mice to determine whether vitamin A administration affected the prolongation of homograft survival resulting from cortisone therapy. Although in these experiments vitamin A was not found to influence significantly the immunosuppressive action of cortisone, further experiments are required entailing the use of different doses of vitamin A and also a different homograft model, before any conclusions can be made concerning the likely effect of the use of vitamin A in transplant patients having immunosuppressive steroid therapy.