More than 100,000 patients are currently on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, and one of the biggest challenges involves finding a compatible donor to minimize risk of organ rejection. But what if compatibility wasn’t a requirement? Johns Hopkins University recently unveiled a study in which doctors altered a patient’s immune system, allowing the patient to receive a kidney from a previously incompatible living donor.
For the study, patient participants underwent a process known as “desensitization.” This is when the immune system’s cells, or antibodies, are filtered from the blood. Doctors waited until the patients’ bodies replenished the antibodies, then performed the transplant with an incompatible living donor kidney. It was found that the patient’s regenerated antibodies were less likely to reject the new kidney. Of the 1,095 participants, 72 percent of patients who received an incompatible kidney were still alive after eight years.
The “desensitization” procedure costs around $30,000 in addition to the cost of the transplant which can be up to $100,000. Although the procedures are expensive, the study’s authors argue it would cost less than dialysis treatment over time. The study was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine and can be found here.
