Transplant patients could say goodbye to Life-Long medication

August 31, 2006

New Delhi: Organ transplant patients, who have to spend the rest of their life taking anti-rejection drugs could soon find relief, thanks to a new path-breaking procedure which eliminates the need for medication.

The process, in which the bone marrow of the organ donor is transplanted along with the donated organ, could become mainstream in three years, according to Dr David Sachs, director, transplantation biology research center, Massachusetts General Hospital.

Dr Sachs team has already carried out the procedure in 11 patients, so it is already "in the clinic," he said, but they must still be "considered experimental" for now.

Dr AS Soin, Sr Consultant and Surgeon at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital says people in India could also reap the benefits from the new method around the same time as others. "According to my estimate, it will take around three to five years," he said.

The principle behind the path-breaking procedure is simple. Normally, the disease fighting immune cells of the patient tries to kill the transplanted organ, which is why drugs are used to suppress them. By transplanting the bone marrow of the donor along with the organ, immune cells present in the marrow recognises the organ and rejection is avoided.

"We fool the patient's body into thinking the new organ is part of its own," says Dr Sachs.

This eliminates the harmful side-effects of taking anti-rejection drugs, or immuno-suppressants, which includes kidney problems, swollen gums, headache and excessive growth of body hair, besides weakening the immune system, thereby making the patient more susceptible to infections, and in some cases, cancer.

The marrow transplant is not without its drawbacks. "It is an extremely tiring process as the patient's own bone marrow must first be killed by radiation or with drugs," says Dr Soin.

"Also the patient must be isolated as the risk of infection is extremely high because he is basically 'immuno-deficient' during the procedure," he adds.

Besides the bone marrow transplant, a few other promising procedures which could replace drugs are in the experimental stages. "One is the injection of monoclonal antibodies," says Dr Soin. These antibodies are target specific and have much lesser side effects as compared to drugs so are less harmful.

Another is the injection of donor bone marrow into the thymus of patients. In theory, this also leads to recognising of the transplanted organ as the body's own as donor immune cells gets into the recipient's body.

Bureau Report

Copyright © 2006 Zee News Limited.

This article posted September 10, 2006.