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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> Of those who die under optimal conditions, only about 60 percent have consented to donate their organs, he said.
"Realistically, if 100 percent of the people consented to donate their organs, we still wouldn't be able to save everybody," Fleming said. "The need continues to outstrip the supply. But if we can get everyone to consent to transplant, that's nearly twice the number of people who can be saved."
But supply isn't the only obstacle facing transplant recipients. To keep their bodies from rejecting donated organs, patients must take a variety of medications that suppress the immune system. Unfortunately, those drugs often come with a range of severe side effects. By suppressing the immune system, they also leave patients open to infection.
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In the latest wave of innovation, researchers have discovered therapies that allow transplant recipients to stop taking the powerful drugs that keep their bodies from rejecting the new organ.
"We hope this will improve the quality of life for someone who receives a transplant from another human being," said Dr. David Sachs, director of the Transplantation Biology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who published his findings in a recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. "We think this tolerance also will help reduce the amount of chronic rejection of organs.
"That's the main disadvantage of immunosuppression, that it increases the risk of a wide range of infections, and even cancer," he added.
And that's why the new research -- in which patients can be taken off the anti-rejection drugs -- is important, said Sachs, who heads one of the research teams that have had success.
The method being investigated involves a procedure that partially destroys a transplant recipient's bone marrow. This is done to reduce the level of T-cells, the part of the immune system most responsible for organ rejection.
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