Transplantation Technique for Pediatric Organs

An animal study has shown that a new transplantation technique may prevent rejection of foreign tissue in children so they can accept a transplanted organ such as a heart without immunosuppression. The results were reported at the annual Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons in Chicago (OL. USA).

The technique utilizes the ability of the thymus, highly active in children, to promote tolerance and prolong the survival of transplanted tissue. In the study, surgeons transplanted the right lobe of the thymus gland and its arterial and venous blood supply as well as a heart in a single transplanted organ unit in four large animals. In a set of three control animals, surgeons transplanted only the heart.

All three of the control animals developed rejection and the cardiac grafts failed within 64 days. In contrast, there were no signs of rejection as late as 175 days after transplantation in the animals that also received the thymus gland. The transplanted cardiac muscle survived for more than 200 days in two of the animals and for 73 and 142 days in the remaining animals. Test showed that the thymus gland was producing new cells as early as 30 days after the surgery.

"I am very excited about the technique. It potentially could be used to induce tolerance to any transplanted organ in children,” said David H. Sachs, M.D., director of the Transplantation Biology Research Center (TBRC) at Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston, USA; www.mgh.harvard.edu), who led the study.




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