2023-08-17 14:30:00
One more step towards the medicine of the future! A team of American doctors has transplanted pig kidney to brain dead man who had donated his body to science. 32 days later, the kidney is still functional, a memory for this type of operation. It is “the longest period during which a genetically modified pig kidney has worked in a human”, welcomed the doctors in a press release (source 1). Following the death of the 57-year-old man, his kidneys were removed and then replaced with the porcine kidney genetically modified to avoid rejection. The operation was a success: not only was the kidney not rejected, but it fulfilled all the necessary kidney functions. A first, since “no study to date has shown the ability of a xenograft to provide vital kidney function in humans”. Doctors will carefully monitor the health of the kidney for another month.
The hope of overcoming the lack of organs
Beyond being a medical feat, “this study presents xenotransplantation as a potential viable solution to an organ shortage crisis responsible for thousands of preventable deaths each year. Indeed, kidney transplantation is the reference treatment in the event of end-stage renal failure. Unfortunately, “the gap between supply and demand is so great that 40% of patients die within 5 years while waiting for a kidney transplant”, estimate the authors of the study.
In France, more than 18,000 patients are waiting for a kidney. But only 3,376 transplants were performed in 2022. The hope of overcoming the lack of human organs tomorrow thanks to xenografts (transplantation of animal organs) is getting closer, especially since several had already been performed before: a world’s first transplant of a pig kidney to a human in 2021, then a pig heart to a living human in 2022 who died two months later.
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