A baby in North Carolina has received a transplant that may prevent his body from rejecting the organ without the need for lifelong drugs.
According to a statement from Duke University, the first person to receive a heart transplant along with tissue from the same donor is a child.
It is possible that this combination transplant could allow the child's body to accept it, because the thymus plays an important role in immune system function.
If we did a heart transplant on Easton, we could take that heart from the same donor, and it would be able to be recognized as self.
Easton needs more research to see if this combination transplant will allow him to live without the need for immunosuppressive drugs, as well as if it will work for other transplant recipients.
If the approach succeeds, it could be applied to all solid organs down the road.
How long can organs remain outside the body before being used?
According to Duke University, Easton had open heart surgery when he was just 5 days old.
Easton's doctors decided that he would need a heart transplant and that the surgery wasn't enough to fix the problem.
Easton would need a transplant because he had a thymus condition.
Researchers at Duke had been studying this combination in animal models.
Easton had a heart transplant when he was 6 months old, and two weeks later, his doctors implanted the tissue from the same donor that had been cultured in a laboratory.
According to Duke University, Easton's immune cells are being produced by the thymus tissue 172 days after the transplant.
Easton is currently taking drugs to prevent his body from rejecting his new organ, but his doctors will try to get him off the drugs in the next few months.
immunosuppressive drugs are taken by transplant recipients to prevent organ rejection. Turek said long-term use of the drugs can be toxic. According to Duke University, the heart that is donated may eventually be rejected, with the typical heart lasting around 10 to 15 years.
Turek said that Easton's case could change the way transplants are done in the future.
Even if the procedure works for Easton, there are additional challenges in applying the technique to people with a functioning thymus.
Turek said that the main issue was figuring out how to do this in a patient with a very competent immune system.
We were given the gift of having our son back, but we were also able to give the gift of this possibility with the thymus, to help expand this for other children that are going through the same thing.
There are related content.
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How long can organs remain outside the body?
A new study moves us one step closer to universal transplant organs.
The article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.
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