A group of New York City surgeons transplanted a pig kidney into a brain-dead man. The organ has been functioning normally for more than a month. This is a key step to the possibility of using animal organs in humansThis was announced on Wednesday by doctors at the Langone Medical Center at New York University.
They have done similar transplants before. But this is the first time a pig kidney he has been working in the human body for so long. In a 52-year-old patient, the organ was not rejected; he managed to produce urine and clear creatinine. The researchers will continue the study for another month to make sure the organ stays active even longer.
“It looks even better than a human kidney,” Robert Montgomery, director of the transplant institute at the Langone Medical Center, said on July 14. That’s when they replaced two kidneys from a brain-dead patient with one kidney from a genetically engineered pig.
The study fills hundreds of thousands of patients with hope. Approximately 800,000 Americans are living with end-stage renal disease. Many people die after years of waiting for a kidney. Some don’t even make it to the waiting list.
In Spain, according to a 2018 study, the prevalence of chronic kidney disease ranges from 10 and 15% of the adult population. In other words, it affects one in seven Spaniards, which is in line with the estimate recorded in the United States.
Successful porcine kidney transplant after several failures
Animal-to-human transplant attempts have failed for years as the immune system attacks the new organ tissue. Thus, scientists are now using genetically modified pigs with the goal that their organs could better fit human bodies.
New York University and the University of Alabama performed several porcine kidney transplants in 2021 and 2022. but they only managed to get it to work for two or three days. Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hersink School of Medicine published Wednesday a study on another patient who received a porcine kidney with 10 genetic changes earlier this year. The kidney was not rejected and continued to function for seven days.
The new graft from NYU Langone Medical Center came from a pig that only one genetic change required. This modification was made to remove a protein that a person’s immune system attacks shortly after surgery.
Experiments are performed on the bodies of people with brain death, with the prior consent of their relatives, for safety reasons. Pennsylvania reported that the US authorities are considering allow some research into porcine heart or kidney transplantation to voluntary patients.
Source: Hiper Textual
