Chemoprevention

Chemoprevention is the administration of a drug to prevent disease before it develops, rather than to treat disease that is already present. Applications include giving antibiotics to patients with impaired immune systems to ward off infection, using anticoagulants such as heparin in hospitalized patients to prevent blood clots, giving specific antimalarial drugs to prevent malaria in at-risk regions, and administering intrathecal chemotherapy to cancer patients to keep disease from spreading into the nervous system. Because every medication carries some risk of side effects and cost can be prohibitive when the disease being prevented is rare, chemoprevention is only pursued when the benefits of treatment are judged to outweigh the risks.