(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- One-third of kidney failure patients have certain
kinds of antigens in their body that put them at high risk for organ rejection.
For these patients, the chances of receiving a new kidney are slim -- but thanks
to newly developed techniques, they may now have the chance to receive a
life-saving transplant.
Kidney transplant specialists at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center have opened the
door to previously unsuitable patients in need of transplants by developing a
new technology called a solid phase assay. Patients whose bodies have been
highly exposed to substances called non-self human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) are
likely to reject a new organ such as a kidney. HLAs can be picked up from blood
transfusions, previous transplants or pregnancy. A solid phase assay uses beads
coated with certain types of these substances to determine how resistant a
patient’s body will be to a new organ.
“This allows us to do a more quantitative analysis and predict more accurately
which patients are the best candidates to have a successful transplant with a
low risk of acute rejection,” Nancy L. Reinsmoen, Ph.D., director of
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s HLA Laboratory and first author of the article,
was quoted as saying.
If physicians find a patient’s body will resist a new kidney, they can then turn
to a procedure called intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) to “desensitize” the
body to the antigens that arrive with a new organ.
SOURCE: Transplantation, Sept. 27, 2008
