Doctors now say they have developed a technique that could free many organ transplant patients from having to take immune system suppressing drugs for the rest of their lives.
The treatment involves weakening the patient’s immune system, then giving the recipient bone marrow from the person who donated the organ. In one experiment, four of five kidney recipients were off immune-suppressing medicines up to five years later.
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Two recent kidney transplant operations have caused Chinese medical experts, lawmakers and ethics advocates to call for a reexamination of the country’s human organ transplant regulations.
Less than a month ago, He Yiwen, a 17-year-old girl, and He Zhigang, a 39-year-old man, both from Changde City in central Hunan Province, did not know each other. But they were both suffering from deadly uremia and badly in need of a lifesaving kidney transplant.
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