The girl with the curl

Article Abstract:

There may be an increased risk of developing cancers associated with the drugs taken to suppress the immune system following organ transplantation. A 47-year-old kidney transplant recipient with lupus developed a fever with no additional symptoms 40 days following transplant surgery. The patient had taken drugs to suppress the immune system both immediately before and three years prior to transplant surgery. Doctors found lymph cancer in addition to a cytomegaloviral infection in this patient. Ganciclovir and acyclovir therapy effectively treated the viral infection, the lymph cancer regressed after discontinuing the immunosuppressive drugs, and the transplanted kidney continued to function well. Long-term suppression of the immune system with drug therapy may have allowed the cancerous cells to replicate unchecked. Organ transplants may continue to thrive despite discontinuing immunosuppressive therapy in transplant patients that develop lymph cancer.

Risk factors, Cytomegalovirus infections, Lymphomas

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Acquired immune tolerance to cadaveric renal allografts: a study of three patients treated with total lymphoid irradiation

Article Abstract:

When a foreign substance enters the body, an immune response is stimulated in an effort to reject it. This holds true for transplant and graft tissue. Immunosuppressive drugs must be given to reduce the immune response and maintain graft function. However, there are many side effects associated with long-term use of immunosuppressive drugs, and alternative methods to improve immune tolerance are being sought. In an early study using rats, it was possible to reduce the number of cells involved in the immune response by irradiation of the lymphatic system, prior to the introduction of the foreign organs. In three patients receiving kidney transplants, this method of lymphoid irradiation increased graft tolerance for 10-69 months. This method did not exceed the higher tolerance experienced with steroid immunosuppressive drugs and the process of lymphoid irradiation is very complicated. This method, although promising, needs to be improved.

Research, Methods, Analysis, Radiotherapy, Transplantation immunology, Leukocytes, White blood cells, column, Cell-mediated lympholysis

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Racial differences in the survival of cadaveric renal allografts: overriding effects of HLA matching and socioeconomic factors

Article Abstract:

Black kidney transplant recipients may be more likely to reject the transplanted organ than white kidney transplant recipients. Socioeconomic factors and poor donor-recipient matching may the main factors causing this difference in transplant success. Among 100 patients who had received a kidney transplant one year earlier, 57 were black and 43 were black. Survival was similar among the two patient groups one year after undergoing transplantation. More of the black patients did not have a fully functioning kidney or did not have a kidney that was functioning at all at one year compared with the white patients. The main reasons for the higher rate of transplant failure among black patients included younger age at the time of transplant, poor immunological matching between transplant donor and recipient and poor health insurance coverage. More of the black patients did not comply with follow-up treatment than did the white patients.

Surgery, Graft rejection, Whites, Blacks

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