Hope for Dialysis Patients

Reported July 24, 2008
Hope for Dialysis Patients

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Many patients awaiting a kidney transplant find themselves on dialysis for years. About one-third of kidney failure patients have high levels of "anti-donor" antibodies – a condition that makes it almost impossible for a patient's body to accept a donor organ.

Clinical trials have shown high-dose intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) therapy can "desensitize" patients with high levels of anti-donor antibodies, increasing their chances of successful transplantation. A new combination therapy using IVIG and rituzimab -- an antibody engineered to bind to a specific protein -- may offer superior results to IVIG alone.

Results of a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reveal the combination therapy improved transplant rates to 80 percent of treated patients. The one-year patient and graft survival rates were 100 percent and 94 percent, respectively.

Study authors say especially for patients awaiting a deceased-donor transplant, the combination therapy appears to offer an alternative to ongoing dialysis. The results also reveal the combination therapy is less costly than IVIG alone, but authors say further multi-center trials are needed to confirm their findings.

SOURCE: New England Journal of Medicine, 2008

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