Washington – Chinese researchers report new steps in search For animal to humans transplants – With a successful pork kidney transplantation and a Wednesday’s track that pork livers could also be useful.
A Chinese patient is the third Person in the world known for living with a pork kidney edited by genes. And the same research team also reported an experiment that implemented a pork liver in a dead brain person.
The scientists are Pigs alterate genetically Therefore, their organs are more human in the hope of relieving a shortage of transplantation. Two initial xenotransplants in the USA. – Two pork hearts and Two pork kidneys -The short duration was. But two additional pork kidney receptors are thriving, a Alabama woman transplanted in November and a New Hampshire Man Transplanted in January. An US clinical trial is about to begin.
Almost three weeks after renal surgery, the Chinese patient “is very good” and the pork kidney also works very well, said Dr. Lin Wang of the Xijing Hospital of the Fourth University of Military Medicine in Xi’an the journalists in an informative session this week.
Wang, part of the Hospital Xenotransplants team, said the kidney recipient remains in the hospital for the tests. The Chinese media reported that she is a 69 -year -old woman diagnosed with renal insufficiency eight years ago.
But Wang pointed out a possible potential step in xenotransplantation: learn to pork hígados transplant. His team reported Wednesday in Nature magazine that a pork liver transplanted to a dead brain person survived for 10 days, without early signs of rejection. He said that the pork liver produced bile and albumin, important for the basic function of the organs, although not as much as human livers do.
The liver is a complex challenge due to its various works, including the elimination of waste, decomposing nutrients and medications, combating infection, storing iron and regulating blood coagulation.
“We discovered that it could work a bit in a human being,” Wang said. He speculated that it would be enough to help support a human liver that fails.
In the United States last year, surgeons from the University of Pennsylvania tried that kind of “bridge” support Uniting a pork liver To a brain dead human body to filter blood, as well as dialysis for failed kidneys. The Egénesis of the American pig developer is studying that approach.
In China, the Wang team did not eliminate the liver of the deceased person, but implanted the pork liver near it.
That “cloud the image,” said Dr. Parsia Vosefi, a liver transplant surgeon at the UT Southwestern Medical Center that was not involved with work. “We hope it is a first step, but still, much like any good investigation, more questions than answers.”
Wang said his team later replaced the human liver of another dead brain with a pork liver and is analyzing the result.
According to media reports, another Chinese hospital last year transplanted a pork liver to a living patient after a piece of his own cancerous liver was eliminated, but it is not clear how that experiment was.
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