Transplant News and Research

RSS

Cellular grafting procedure helps young patients with knee disorder get active

At 14 years old, Adam Vasser of Los Altos, Calif., was an active kid who loved baseball.

2 Apr 2008

Older corneas suitable for transplantation

The age pool of corneas for transplant should be expanded to include donors up to 75 years of age, based on findings from a study funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI), one of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

2 Apr 2008

The mysterious link between summer birthdates and myopia

Do corneas from older donors meet quality standards for transplant surgery? These are among the topics explored in the April 2008 issue of Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

2 Apr 2008

Dallas area cornea shortages could benefit from national study

Surgeons and patients from UT Southwestern Medical Center and UT Southwestern Transplant Services Center joined in a landmark study showing that corneas from older donors are as successful for transplants after five years as is tissue from younger donors, allowing possible expansion of the donor pool.

2 Apr 2008

Investigational treatment for advanced widespread emphysema

Researchers at Suburban Lung Associates and the Chicago Chest Center recently announced the start of the EASE (Exhale Airway Stents for Emphysema) Trial to explore an investigational treatment for advanced widespread emphysema.

2 Apr 2008

Lung transplants not dangerous for children with cystic fibrosis, after all

Responding to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, which concluded that lung transplants were harmful for children with cystic fibrosis, articles published in the latest issue of Pediatric Transplantation refute the conclusions and argue that the highly influential research was severely flawed.

1 Apr 2008

Gene mutations tied to immune comeback during therapy for HIV-1

A new study by U.S. scientists provides compelling evidence that two genes are linchpins in defining the course of immune restoration in HIV-positive individuals undergoing virus-suppressing therapy.

31 Mar 2008

Study shows lifetime effects of pediatric liver transplants

Parents of pediatric liver transplant recipients report lower health-related quality of life for their children two years after the surgery, compared to reports from the parents of healthy children.

28 Mar 2008

Groundbreaking surgery removes all abdominal organs to get at cancer

In groundbreaking surgery a patient has had all of the organs in the abdomen temporarily removed so surgeons could operate on a cancerous tumour.

25 Mar 2008

Therapeutic cloning treats Parkinson's disease in mice

Research led by investigators at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) has shown that therapeutic cloning, also known as somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), can be used to treat Parkinson's disease in mice.

25 Mar 2008

New hope for children with bilateral Wilms tumors

Physicians at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have demonstrated that children with bilateral Wilms tumor, a cancer of the kidneys, can retain normal function in both kidneys by undergoing a procedure called bilateral nephron-sparing surgery, even when preoperative scans suggest that the tumors are inoperable.

25 Mar 2008

Organ sales and moral travails - Iran's system of compensated organ donation

The United States suffers from an acute shortage of kidneys for transplant, with 73,000 people waiting for deceased donors to make organs available.

24 Mar 2008

Australian transplant rates plummet despite 5.5 million organ donors

Leading medical experts in Australia have voiced their concern about the falling rates of transplants.

21 Mar 2008

Cell transplant dramatically changes diabetic's life

Experimental cell plant transplantation has dramatically changed the life of a diabetic woman.

19 Mar 2008

New technique improves outcome for living donor liver transplants

The University of Alberta Hospital (UAH) is one of only a few centers in Canada that perform living donor liver transplantation, a surgical procedure developed in the late 1980s that expands the organ donor pool. About 80 liver transplants are done a year in Alberta, 10 of those being living-donor.

19 Mar 2008

New interventional radiology treatment shows promise for complications from bone marrow, stem cell tranplants

The standard treatment to treat graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) after bone marrow or cord blood transplant is intravenous (IV) steroids that alter the immune response; however, it is not always effective and failure results in very high mortality.

19 Mar 2008

Discovery could lead to much-needed kidney failure treatment

The unwanted activation of an important cell-signaling pathway may play a role in two kidney problems that are major causes of end-stage renal disease, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have found.

13 Mar 2008

Trial of new procedure that may help emphysema suffers

Researchers at Henry Ford Hospital have announced the start of the EASE (Exhale Airway Stents for Emphysema) Trial, an international, multi-center clinical trial to explore an investigational treatment that may offer a significant new option for those suffering with advanced emphysema.

13 Mar 2008

Turning off rogue macrophages

University of Pennsylvania scientists studying macrophages, the biological cells that spring from white blood cells to eat and destroy foreign or dying cells, have discovered how these "policemen" differentiate between friend and foe.

12 Mar 2008

New malaria drug also treats toxoplasmosis

A new drug that will soon enter clinical trials for treatment of malaria also appears to be 10 times more effective than the key medicine in the current gold-standard treatment for toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by a related parasite that infects nearly one-third of all humans—more than two billion people worldwide.

6 Mar 2008