According to doctors, this is the first time in the world that a pig kidney has been successfully used as a replacement organ in a human. The surgery was performed Saturday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
A 62-year-old man who suffered from life-threatening kidney disease.
The kidney is genetically modified and comes from a pig.
It took four hours.
He is recovering well and will likely be released soon.
The transplant could offer hope to tens of thousands of people who depend on donor organs. Research into so-called xenotransplantation has been conducted since the 1980s. Pigs are particularly suitable as donors because their metabolism is comparable to that of humans.
Scientists have been trying to make pig organs usable for humans for some time now. To make this possible, the genetic composition of the donor animals must, among other things, be changed. Without genetic modification, transmission to humans would result in an immediate, severe rejection response.
Most recently, two critically ill patients at University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, had pig hearts implanted as replacement organs in recent years. However, both patients died a few weeks after the operation.
The history of xenotransplantation – the transplantation of cells, tissue or organs from one species to or onto another species – is long and marked by defeats.
In the 1960s, chimpanzee kidneys were transplanted into a small number of human patients. Most died shortly afterwards: the longest survival time for a patient was nine months.
In 1984, a baboon heart was transplanted into a little girl named Stephanie Fae Beauclair in California. The girl gained fame under the name “Baby Fae”. She died 20 days after the transplant – and 32 days after her birth.
Baby Fae was neither the first nor the last case of baboon-to-human xenotransplantation. What is special about the Baby Fae case is that it is still criticized today because the ethical aspects were not sufficiently taken into account: the little girl’s suffering was prolonged, but not cured.
In principle, pigs offer advantages over primates when it comes to organ procurement: they are easier to raise and reach the size of an adult human in six months.
Pig heart valves are already routinely transplanted into humansand some patients with diabetes have received pancreatic cells from pigs. Pig skin is also used as a temporary transplant for burn patients.
(red)
With material from the SDA and DPA news agencies
source: watson
I’m Maxine Reitz, a journalist and news writer at 24 Instant News. I specialize in health-related topics and have written hundreds of articles on the subject. My work has been featured in leading publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, and Healthline. As an experienced professional in the industry, I have consistently demonstrated an ability to develop compelling stories that engage readers.
