Friday, February 01, 2008

More on transplant breakthroughs

CBN News has a report in their health and science section which is exciting. A dear friend of mine had a kidney transplant 18 months ago and she's had a very rugged time of it. The anti-rejection drugs have given her all sorts of nasty side effects. The transplant is doing great... it's the stuff to keep her body from rejecting her new kidney that's caused all sorts of misery for her. It would be a terrific step forward if they could rebuild a new immune system that won't need medication.
Doctors Report Transplant Breakthrough
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. In one
experiment, four of five kidney recipients were off immune-suppressing
medicines up to five years later."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 Thursday's New England
Journal of Medicine. ...

Read the rest of the article: Breakthrough - Chang

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