Drug Azathioprine - Any one tried?

Hi everyone,

My hemo has just informed me that she wants to try me on this drug. It'll be the first drug I've tried since being diagnosed recently.

She's avoiding steroids as I'm quite a bit overweight and going straight to this, which I've been informed is an immunosuppresant. Have any of you used this to treat ITP? What were the side effects if any? I'm very nervous of taking any new drugs due to their side effects. I'm self employed and have just won a few new contracts which are desperately needed so my first concern is whether this drug will have any effect on my day-to-day work life (ie. I need my brain to function fast and furious).

Please reply back if you've any information/experience on this. Thanks.

I have been using azathioprine for quite a while, not for ITP but for psoriasis.
I can't tell you how well it might control ITP. However, I have had no side effects from 100 mg/day of
it for quite a long time. I think some people do get nausea from it, but I have had
no problems.

I don't think azathioprine is known for its mind altering side effects. It made me very sick but mentally I was fine. It can take a several months to higher the count so you need to be patient. I didn't get that far.

I've been on azathioprine for 7 months now - had to increase the dose very slowly as if I did it too fast, I had really bad abdominal pain so had to reduce and start building up again. Did have issues for the first couple of months with feeling very bloated, even if I'd only had small meals - so I lost a fair bit of weight (which was a positive for me!). Started to have a response with platelets after 3 months and went up to the 50's but then I had a bad cold and the flu jab, platelets back to single figures 3 months ago. Had been on 100mg a day for about 4 months at that point, now increasing to 150 (125 per day for a month first) to give it a bit more time, but it's a bit of a long shot. Have to say though, that this drug has far fewer side effects for me than prednisolone, still dealing with the fallout from that 14 months after I last took it - a new thing, cataracts! So, surgery for them next year ... but if azathioprine doesn't work, i'll be getting a splenectomy in the spring. Had indium labelled scan in London a few weeks ago, and it is predominantly my spleen that's doing the sequestration, so that means I've got a good chance of it working, at least for a while. In scotland, I can't get romiplostin or eltrombopag due to NHS policy, unless I've failed splenectomy or am not a candidate for it, so am reading up about life without a spleen!

Hope you have some success with azathioprine - it can work well for some people.