I have a friend with melanoma and auto-immune disease (ankylosing spondylitis as well as a mild case of crohn's disease). He is currently taking Sulfazine for both. His rheumatologist said he could switch to leflunomide, but he is worried about the risk of infection so he has not changed his medication. His oncologist at Sloan Kettering is indifferent as to whether he should switch his arthritis medication to leflunomide since it's only been tested on animals. Is there a melanoma network for patients with autoimmune disease. It seems that most of the current treatments as well as experimental treatments are based on enhancing the autoimmune system which would cause a problem to these patients. Also some of the drugs are difficult to tolerate if the patient also has crohn's disease (ie ipilimumab.
