Treatment of autoimmune diseases and systemic vasculitis with pooled human intravenous immune globulin

Treatment of autoimmune and vasculitic disorders with intravenous immune globulin (IVIG) has shown great promise. IVIG appears to provide large amounts of immunoregulatory substances that have the capacity to regulate the immune system in various ways. The ability of IVIG to regulate deleterious autoimmune responses and disease is largely directly related to its ability to stimulate the production of anti-idiotypic autoantibodies after infusion. In this respect, IVIG represents a novel immunoregulatory agent with the ability to control autoimmune and vasculitic disorders without subsequent predisposition to infectious complications. Future work and controlled clinical trials will be necessary to prove the efficacy of this therapy for specific autoimmune and vasculitic disorders.