I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: Medical Breakthroughs => Topic started by: keith on February 09, 2008, 10:57:49 PM
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A girl from Australia who is just 15yrs old got a liver transplant. All transplant patient's have to take anti-rejection meds. Demi Brennen's body not only acceptedthe donated liver her body took on the donor's blood type as well as the immune system as well. Dr's (Dr Julie curtin) of WESTMEAD CHILDREN'S HOSP. SAID the holy grail of the transplant was achieved for everybody demi's body did it itself. Dr's saythatthis has never happend before now. Dr's well be studying her case to see if they can unlock the secret to her amazing accomplishment
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I don't know about the case reported above, but there are many people who develop what is called 'immunological tolerance,' which means that at a certain point their immune system stops attacking the transplanted organ and they can then go for the rest of their lives without taking immunosuppressive medications. This happens most often with organs such as the liver where there is considerable interaction between the patient's blood and the implanted organ. The problem is that aside from the extremely dangerous experiment of withdrawing the immunosuppressive drugs and seeing what happens, there is no way to tell when patients have developed tolerance, so there may be many patients taking immunosuppressives all their lives when they don't have to. Those patients who are discovered are mainly those who cannot afford their medications any longer and thus discover by accident that they did not need them.
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My mom had a liver transplant in '04 and is down to less than 1/4 of the beginning doage of immunosuppressant drugs. Stauffenberg, I believe this is very possible. I don't know if it makes any difference, but she was never on steroids except for a big dose right after surgery for organ swelling.
She has gotten along pretty well, but is having a horrible time with skin cancer. They seem to pop up within just a few days of the docs taking other ones off....it seems never ending. She has had 20 taken off in the last 30 days. It would be great if they would try taking her off of the Prograf, if they think it could work, and maybe she would defeat death from skin cancer....supposedly the 2nd leading killer among transplant patients.
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Article on it a few months ago at this thread.
http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=6724.0
Video of the girl speaking about what happened.
http://www.breitbart.tv/html/35334.html
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Good post. I have recently read that doing a bone marrow transplant simultaneous with another organ, to avoid immunosuppressants, is either currently being investigated via field study or they are thinking of starting one here in the US. I don't remember where I read this, but if I can find it again, I will post it.
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I too read about that somewhere, but think it maybe in another transplant website.
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Good post. I have recently read that doing a bone marrow transplant simultaneous with another organ, to avoid immunosuppressants, is either currently being investigated via field study or they are thinking of starting one here in the US. I don't remember where I read this, but if I can find it again, I will post it.
It's been discussed for years, but nothing ever comes of it.
It's quite invasive to take bone marrow AND an organ from a donor.
Here's a previous thread http://ihatedialysis.com/forum/index.php?topic=921.0
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This might be the news piece some are thinking of. Our friends in the Boston area sent us a newspaper clipping about this:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N23648705.htm
Here's an excerpt:
Marrow injections help kidney transplant success
23 Jan 2008 22:00:27 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Gene Emery
BOSTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Injecting blood or bone marrow cells into people who have just received a donated kidney can reduce the need for drugs that suppress the immune system, researchers reported on Wednesday.
The stem cells in the blood and bone marrow helped trick the body into tolerating the transplants, two teams of researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.
In one series of experiments, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston tested the technique on five volunteers who received a kidney from a relative. Four were eventually weaned off their anti-suppression drugs.
"While we need to study this approach in a larger group of patients before it is ready for broad clinical use, this is the first time that tolerance to a series of mismatched transplants has been intentionally and successfully induced," said Dr. David Sachs, who helped lead the study.
Doctors have long sought a permanent and reliable way to trick the body into thinking that a transplanted organ is not a foreign invader. The drugs currently in use can have onerous side effects, including cancer and kidney damage.
Bone marrow makes the body's immune system cells, and the donor's immune cells presumably took up residence in the transplant patient's body and helped create a welcoming reception for the kidney, the researchers said.
This technique has been tried before under different circumstances including on multiple myeloma patients.
The new study involved patients whose kidney failure was caused by other problems. Patients first had their bone marrow partially destroyed and then received a drug that kills off T cells -- immune cells that play a key role in rejecting transplanted organs.
The patients ended up with bone marrow that was a temporary mix of their own cells and the cells from the donor.
The first two patients did very well. After problems with a third patient, the researchers added a drug to also kill B cells, another element of the immune system.
All four of the successfully transplant patients continue to have functioning kidneys two to five years later, the researchers said.
In another Journal article, a research team from the Stanford University School of Medicine, led by John Scandling, reported that they were also able to eliminate the need for immunosuppressive drugs in a 47-year-old patient who received donated blood cells from his brother two weeks after getting one of his kidneys.
"My body thinks my brother's kidney is mine," patient Larry Kowalski said in a statement.
Six other patients given the same treatment have not been able to stop taking their immunosuppressive drugs, although their donated kidneys were not a perfect match the way Kowalski's was.
In a third study, a 9-year-old girl who got a liver transplant was able to stop taking immune-suppressing drugs after the donor liver apparently seeded stem cells into her bone marrow, creating a hybrid immune system and even changing her blood type. (Editing by Maggie Fox and David Wiessler)
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Yes, apparently it's been 5 years but no new developments. Looks like 5 of 11 patients have done ok so far.
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The place I was thinking I read a discussion on it was at transplantbuddies. I think I fell a sleep reading some of the discussions because they can get heavily involved in a bland way that makess it not interesting to read.
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Yes, that is the article I was thinking about...thanks for posting.
I am sure that anything that big would take a lot of time, as well as having the perfect criteria to even try it. Not to mention, maybe a lot of people would not volunteer to have every aspect of their immune system destroyed. I am just happy that they are looking for anything that will help :2thumbsup;
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Still looks like this study trial is open and still recruiting.
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00497926?spons=%22Department+of+Defense%22&spons_ex=Y&rank=30
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That is quite interesting and just up the road from me. It really makes me wonder the effect it would have on a known recurring kidney disease like FSGS. If they speculate that FSGS comes back due to some type of circulating aspect in the blood, it would make sense if that got knocked out of the pic as well, couldn't it?
Probably wishful thinking, but maybe it will :)