Kidney transplant patients seek life without drugs with experimental immune system procedure
Transplanting some of the kidney donor's immune-producing cells along with the new organ
Lindsay Porter's kidneys were failing rapidly when a friend offered to donate one of his. Then she made an unusual request: Would he donate part of his immune system, too?
Every day for the rest of their lives, transplant recipients must swallow handfuls of pills to keep their bodies from rejecting a donated organ. The Chicago woman hoped to avoid those problematic drugs, enrolling in a study to try to trick her own immune system into accepting a foreign kidney.
It's one of a series of small, high-stakes experiments around the country that has researchers hopeful that they're finally closing in on how to help at least some transplant patients go drug-free. The key: Create a sort of twin immunity, by transplanting some of the kidney donor's immune-producing cells along with the new organ.
"I'm so lucky," says the 47-year-old Porter, who stumbled across the research at Chicago's Northwestern University. Porter was able to quit her pills last summer, a year after her transplant, and says, "I feel amazing."
These experiments are a big gamble. If the technique fails, patients could lose their new kidney, possibly their lives. Doctors stress that no one should try quitting anti-rejection drugs on their own.
Why risk it even in a careful scientific study? Anti-rejection medications can cause debilitating, even deadly, side effects, from fatigue and infections to an increased risk of cancer and kidney damage.
Without the drugs, "the hope for me is I'm able to keep this kidney for the rest of my life," Porter says.
Across the country, Stanford University is testing a slightly different transplant method - and hosted a reunion earlier this month for about a dozen kidney recipients who've been drug-free for up to three years.
"These people who are off their drugs, they're cured," says Dr. Samuel Strober, who leads the study of Stanford's approach. "If they have to be on drugs the rest of their life, it doesn't have the same meaning of `cure.'"
Anti-rejection drugs work by ratcheting down the immune system, suppressing it from attacking foreign cells. For decades, scientists have sought ways to eliminate the need for the drugs by inducing what's called tolerance - getting one person's immune system to live in harmony with another person's tissue.
The experimental approach: Transplant the seeds of a new immune system along with a new kidney. It's the 21st-century version of a bone marrow transplant, and possible for now only if the transplanted kidney comes from a living donor.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/kidney-transplant-patients-seek-life-drugs-experimental-immune-system-procedure-article-1.1047528#ixzz1plZe7gT7
This blog is posted by Brandon Dybdahl. A heart transplant recipient of 22 years. For more information, please feel free to email me at the address below.
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