Actor Tracey Morgan, recent kidney-transplant recipientScienceDaily (Oct. 5, 2011) — Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a novel protocol that allows kidney-transplant recipients to jettison their indispensable immune-suppressing drugs. The protocol could also spell substantial savings to the health-care system.
The researchers have reported their progress in a letter that will be published Oct. 6 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Eight of the 12 patients discussed in the small study have now been off of immunosuppressant drugs for at least one year, and in some cases for longer than three years, without any apparent damage to their new kidney -- unheard-of in patients undergoing standard transplantation procedures. None of the 12 patients has experienced kidney transplant failure or serious side effects. The withdrawal of drugs from the first enrolled patient was reported in the same journal in 2008, and the current report shows that the successful outcome has been reproduced.
In all 12 cases, recipients were supplied with immunologically matched donor kidneys from close relatives. But the trial, which has been actively enrolling new patients, is now expanding to include imperfectly matched donor-recipient pairs as well.
"Transplant recipients can ordinarily expect to be on a regimen of two or three immune-system-suppressing drugs for the rest of their lives," said immunologist Samuel Strober, MD, who is a professor of medicine and the new protocol's inventor.
"While they help ward off rejection of the new organ by the patient's own immune system, these drugs carry their own risk of side effects, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer," Strober said. The drugs themselves are somewhat toxic to the kidneys, although that is far outweighed by their value in preventing immune rejection.
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