Alert: New Hope for Kidney Failure

Reported September 23, 2008

SOURCE: Seniors Health Channel

(Ivanhoe Newswire) — One-third of kidney failure patients have certain kinds of antigens in their body that put them at high risk for organ rejection. For these patients, the chances of receiving a new kidney are slim -- but thanks to newly developed techniques, they may now have the chance to receive a life-saving transplant.

      Kidney transplant specialists at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center have opened the door to previously unsuitable patients in need of transplants by developing a new technology called a solid phase assay. Patients whose bodies have been highly exposed to substances called non-self human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) are likely to reject a new organ such as a kidney. HLAs can be picked up from blood transfusions, previous transplants or pregnancy. A solid phase assay uses beads coated with certain types of these substances to determine how resistant a patient’s body will be to a new organ.

      “This allows us to do a more quantitative analysis and predict more accurately which patients are the best candidates to have a successful transplant with a low risk of acute rejection,” Nancy L. Reinsmoen, Ph.D., director of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s HLA Laboratory and first author of the article, was quoted as saying.

      If physicians find a patient’s body will resist a new kidney, they can then turn to a procedure called intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) to “desensitize” the body to the antigens that arrive with a new organ.

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