Advance in Transplants -- Donor's Marrow Can Help Avert Rejection

Jan 24, 07:26 PM

LOS ANGELES - In what's being called a major advance in organ transplants, doctors say they have developed a technique that could free many patients from having to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives.

The treatment involved weakening the patient's immune system, then giving the recipient bone marrow from the person who donated the organ. The stem cells from the marrow reprogram the body by allowing new immune cells to grow that don't try to attack the donated organ.

The patients took anti-rejection drugs but were weaned several months later.

Four of the five patients developed a hybrid immune system - where recipient and donor cells live together in the body - for a short time. They were able to stop taking anti-rejection drugs and had healthy kidney function two to five years later.

In the one case that failed, the patient had a second kidney transplant and has been on medications since.

"There's reason to hope these patients will be off drugs for the rest of their lives," said Dr. David Sachs of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who led the research published in today's New England Journal of Medicine.

Since the world's first transplant more than 50 years ago, scientists have searched for ways to trick the body to accept a foreign organ as its own. Immune-suppressing drugs that prevent organ rejection came into wide use in the 1980s. But they raise the risk of cancer, kidney failure and many other problems. And they have unpleasant side effects.

Eliminating the need for anti-rejection drugs is "a huge advance," said Dr. Suzanne Ildstad, a University of Louisville immunology specialist who had no role in the work.

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Study favors bypasses for clogged arteries

Bypass surgery remains the best option for heart patients with more than one clogged artery, new research says.

The findings of the first big study to compare bypass with drug- coated stents dim hopes that the less drastic stent procedure would prove to be just as good for people with multiple blockages.

In the study by Edward Hannan of the State University of New York at Albany, heart attack and death rates were lower among people who had surgery than those given artery-opening balloon angioplasty and stents - mesh cylinders oozing drugs to keep vessels from reclogging.

It is latest setback for drug-coated stents, which have revolutionized heart care and have been implanted in about 6 million people worldwide. However, sales have been hurt in the past year by safety concerns.

- Associated Press

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Originally published by Alicia Chang Associated Press .

(c) 2008 Commercial Appeal, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved. Advance in Transplants -- Donor's Marrow Can Help Avert Rejection
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