Successful transplant of pig kidney into a ... - Kidney Disease
Successful transplant of pig kidney into a human. Good news
Here's to hoping it works. I believe, if they look for live volunteers, I'd raise a hand.
So far, it's been 30 days post-transplant. So, looking good. You could contact the hospital to see if they are taking volunteers.
Jodaer, with Marvin8 MIA your twisted satirical comment made me spit water all over the place and belly laugh! Well played my friend!
I wasn't being sarcastic on purpose but I'm happy to give you a laugh.
You did realize the xenotransplantation was done on a dead person only kept breathing by a respirator and heart pumping by an artificial pump correct? I presumed you meant they could volunteer for such a “clinical trial” lol! Come on my friend take the win and own the funny!
I have to confess when I posted the article, I hadn't read it all the way through. But I'll take the win.
Well take another but this time I spit coffee…another good laugh on the lack of proper article etiquette and telling a fellow member to volunteer for the trial…priceless! Don’t mean to highjack the thread by any means as it’s important but so is laughter!
Laugher is absolutely essential when living with chronic disease. I have a bunch of them. Love, love, love that you spit coffee. 
Thankfully I was not sipping on my tea when I read the above posts. 😁 Thanks to everyone for the humor....
So sweet Nana16! I hope our banter helped. My humor is often dark, satirical and self-deprecating which is hard to express via a post on a website. Thus, it backfires on me more often than not. However I knew Jodaer would relate (after he figured out he was the dark comedian with the “volunteer” comment which was tremendously funny to me). I need to laugh daily as it makes life so much better! Two liquid spitting incidents with belly laughs in a day is awesome. So again thanks for the kind words and understanding cause sometimes I worry I’ll offend and lose my access to the site…lol! My best to you!
Your comment made me snortle. Still lurking, just been dealing with newly discovered potential CVD issue, so I haven't had time to post much. Relying on you to pick up the slack.
There is the resident Carlin or maybe Denis Leary? Regardless I’ve missed your humor and insights equally. I’m still making assumptions willy-nilly like your my resident Carlin or Leary but no longer using plural subjects or pronouns nor hammering on my favorite author who was on dialysis but changed to a plant based diet, bought a $16.99 amino-acid synthesizer from India and rebranded it selling for about $400.00 that you read all about for the small fee of $99 on Amazon for his book…sticking to my “Blackknight1989, I or myself” cause someone reported me to the Big Cheese and I was admonished! Worried the black helicopters were in route but I put my tin-foil hat on verrrry quickly if ya know what I mean…lol! Okay enough of that it was disintegrating towards silliness…
I’m sorry to hear of the potential of a CVD issue (though potential is a better word than probable and MUCH better than definite). As you most likely know in addition to 28 years living on 15/20% kidney function, most likely familia HBP (discovered at age 17) and familial hyperlipidemia (discovered at age 19 just after running the Marine Corps Marathon tot cholesterol 268 triglycerides 434) those 3 comorbities have me at roughly an increased risk of more than 230% compared to a healthy 57 year old man for a significant CVD incident in the next 5 years…Don’t you just love that dehumanizing speak “Significant CVD Risk” that’s straight from JAMA Cardiology from the event calculator page broken into nice palliative 5 year block to determine you own risk of a significant CVD event and not to be too blunt or upset anyone you I’m sure know the dialysis numbers.
So I said all that previous self-centered, narcissistic talk to simply say it’s something that occupies my mind nearly every day. I’m tightening up my end of life planning to be sure my wife and kids can continue my VA Disability, SSDI Disability, get my small insurance benefit, and for goodness sake honor my health care directives. Mostly cause I can’t get out of bed most days and the above mentioned dysfunctions plus as you know I read a lot of professional journals and medical studies. But now equally my wife and I are moving to Florida, Alabama, or the tip of Texas to live on the Redneck Rivera (if unfamiliar with the term it’s the gulf coast where the water is blue not Mississippi River puke brown. Trying to talk my 21 year old daughter into coming with us but don’t think she will, my 26 year old son is “in love!” But I’ve just been dwelling on the issue. Now here you are with a “potential” REAL ISSUE! That needs to get fixed now…I won’t pry but my best and I’m sure all is well. If you don’t mind I’m going to pray for you because that’s my belief. If you do mind that’s okay I’ll pass along good Karma and all my wellbeing to you. Really Marvin8 I am sure all will be as it should be and the potential changes to FALSE ALARM! As always my best!
You are a very kind hearted soul. Thanks!
Just keep in mind that the 3 places you mentioned to move to are generally in the sites of many hurricanes. I’m on the Gulf coast of Florida and have experienced a few. My wife is terrified of them and wants to move from here. Florida is becoming very expensive to live there.
I was happy to hear about this
in all seriousness just one more needed step to address the serious organ shortage issues and many deaths while waiting on a kidney. Still a stop-gap but transplant of any viable organ be it pig genetically modified or human is better than the alternative of years on the 1960s technology and treatment of dialysis and a viable option to people like me who will be denied a human transplant (rightfully so) and will choose to opt-out of dialysis due to the increased risks of a serious CVD issue. I could live with the widow maker heart attack but my biggest fear would be a debilitating stroke needing continuous nursing care with loss of cognitive and speech abilities (maybe because I watched my mom suffer for 18 months of that but caused by Alzheimer’s). Worse a stroke causing locked-in syndrome. I digress this is also tremendous advancement in about 6 months or so from the first trial only viable for 3 days. Would be a huge win as we work towards a true fix to all diagnosed with CKD!
I've left instructions, no feeding tubes, no hydration no intubation. I'm probably going to add no emergency dialysis. One of the reasons there is an organ shortage is the law concerning motorcycle helmets., at least in the US
I am staunch believer that no organization should ever play a role in the “assisted suicide” debacle like the Canadian government is allowing currently and that governments of any kind have no role in any health decisions (reasonable and rational) between patients and doctors. (Full disclosure for the US crowd I was in the military during the Reagan years so I was a Reagan Republican, as I age I’m leaning much more libertarian). Like you I believe that the medical advancement since the 1940s are awesome they extend life in too many cases just for the sake of quantity versus quality. That’s the reason for my medical directive in case I can’t make any decisions when it’s past time because the thought of that decision resting with my wife, son or daughter is unacceptable. I don’t have a death wish nor am I idolizing death…in many ways I fear the unknown of it (for me as a believer if that’s not the reader that’s okay it just my hope and thus my faith) but I’m a pragmatist and a realist so I know intellectually that it’s as much a part of life as injuries in athletics or that I’ll have those who disagree with my words here (note I avoided the trite association of death and taxes…lol!). But I disagree that as you Jodaer we as the patient especially if we have lived with these conditions for decades don’t get to decide when to end the “heroic measures” used to extend life. Most of you know I have in fact had a cessation of heart and brain activity once 27 years ago. I was blessed with great people and highly competent doctors who first saved my life then helped me defy the odds to not lose that saved life again…and I was blessed by what I and many of those same doctors believe was a miracle (no NDE for me unfortunately and if a miracle is not something you believe in that’s your right and perfectly okay). But if I choose not to go through some of the pain and nuisance of dialysis that some describe here while wheelchair bound and living everyday completely disabled then that should be my choice and Jodaer I support your choices but hope it is not an issue for as long as you want it to be my friend!
I had no idea you'd been through so much. Just wow. Let's chat soon.
Blackknight, I agree whole heartedly with almost all you say. I have a different outlook on the spiritual side but as far as turning off the machines I agree. My daughter holds my paperwork. She has been directed to produce them when there is no chance of continuing without machines. I've not had the experience you did but a similar thing happened to my father, after that hospitalization he lived for 5 more years. The opposite happened to my mother. She had been intubated, when it was removed, she wasn't able to breathe on her own for long but refused to be re intubated. They were both 86 at the time of their death.
I have no idea what you are referring to about the Canadian government and what they are doing.
I am fully with you Blacknight, so let’s keep as positive and happy for the moments we have each day, keep as well as we can folks xx😀
Thanks for posting this. It looks very promising. A lot of advancements in progress at present. I am especially hopeful for the work on IL -11 antibodies (clinical trials started by Boehringer Ingelheim) which could halt and even reverse kidney fibrosis.
So what ever happened to the artificial kidney that UCSF was working on? You know, the one that Baxter and Fresenius will make sure never happens because that would just destroy their livelihood.
Why would it, it's just a fancy small footprint dialysis. Will have plenty of maintenance I'm sure. I frankly don't think it's going to happen, Xenotransplantation seems like it would happen a lot sooner.
Can’t find much information on the artificial kidney you referenced past the NKF journal on Kidney Innovation in 2020 as one was in animal trials the other in phase one FDA trials 3 years ago. However, it takes a truckload of money to develop a true artificial, implantable kidney composed of both machine parts and human stem cells. Additionally developing those stem cells to grow into nephrons is pushing scientists knowledge to the cutting edge as replication of kidney cells is possible but extremely hard because of their unique functions. Plus lots of money headed to kidney research in 2014-2020 (finally!) but COVID hit and that money dried up in a second. It’s been hard to get it redirected back to research into a fix for CKD. DaVita or Fresenius Control nearly 80% of the dialysis market and they make a ton of money mostly from insurance plans be them private or government backed to the tune of an average of $300,000 over 3 years from private insurance per ERSD patient (healthgram.com/insight/dial.... For Medicare ERSD represents only 1% of the people on Medicare but account for 7% of the expenditure about $90,000 per patient per year. So there is powerful money against making dialysis obsolete. Yet worldwide costs are increasing at an alarming rate and more and more of the cost burden is shifting to governments. (pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney/need/...
Thus a partnership in the US between the American Society of Nephrologists and HHS (The NIH which is responsible for allocation of government funds to all health issues so this is a private/governmental project) called Kidney X is pushing full steam ahead on a two-track path to develop a fully functional implantable artificial kidney to be implanted using robotic surgery as an outpatient procedure resulting in a permanent fix and replacing dialysis forever. They are flush with funds as well. Here is an explanation from a news release on the website:
To encourage revolutionary designs, Phase 2 of the Artificial Kidney Prize consists of two tracks.
Track One, "Accelerating the Prototype of a Bioartificial Kidney," is open to submissions from innovators with development plans for a prototype bioartificial kidney, including a pathway and future timeline toward first-in-human studies.
Track Two, "Components and Tools that Enable the Development of an Artificial Kidney," is open to proposals for tools or components that adapt regenerative medicine, cellular engineering, tissue engineering, systems biology, and/or synthetic biology methods to address a challenge currently faced in the development of a fully functional artificial kidney. hhs.gov/about/news/2022/08/...
And finally the link to the Kidney X site:
So hope abounds! I hope this helps!
Try going to pharm.ucsf.edu/kidney
Nice summary re the Kidney Project and related areas. Private and government funds are behind it as you mention. This is also true with the pig-to-human project. I truly admire the research and development efforts carried out by the great minds at the universities, sometimes with great outcomes like the Internet which has its roots at MIT and UCLA. Thankfully, it's not super easy for private companies to stop government and private involvement. So we now have research going on at the universities with kidney implantation in two different areas - it's wonderful! The Kidney Project is definitely moving along, it just doesn't get as much publicity; advances involving genetic manipulation and living beings always get more press than engineered inventions. Yet, I noticed that the Kidney Project, running quietly in the background, has attracted the attention of other nations like the Netherlands (which invented dialysis back in the day). I guess I want to say that both approaches have lots of merit with or without the drum roll of notoriety. While they both have plusses and minuses, they both have the potential to vastly improve lives - with or without immunosuppressants. May it happen sooner than later - the field is wide open for improvement. Thanks again, LLWegeners.
I thought of all of you out there when I saw that on the news. I hope that their successes continue, and I hope it will be of benefit to some of you in the future.
This is for Blacknight1989 - FL and TX do not have a personal income tax, a plus. But if you want to enjoy pristine beaches and beautiful water, you have to go to FL (panhandle is best) or Alabama. Texas has destroyed what they used to have as a beach/gulf with offshore oil rigs every few feet, even affecting south Padre. Beaches have been nothing but tar and brown/grey gunk for decades. I grew up there and thought I had gone to heaven when I saw the Emerald Coast of FL. Thanks for your encouragement for me here in Arkansas. I am at the mercy of UAMS and will soon start the kidney transplant list qualification process. Doing well otherwise. Trying to follow your words of wisdom.
It was exciting news for us.. not for the pig..but then we use animals for ur comfort anyway..Why not allow prisoners to reduce their sentence by donating a kidney.. they would be helping and everyon would benefit...
Is there any country in the world doing that?
no but they should
Organ trading, aka poaching, happens around the world - organs harvested from people in bad situations in exchange "for favors". Developed nations refuse to engage in it and have passed laws against it. I believe, however, one can still fly to a country like India, the Philippines, and others and still get a kidney from such a victim. But centers here would undoubtedly report the behavior. I'm not sure what the outcome is for recipients - I think most get follow-up care from the country where the kidney was snatched.
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Finally some good news!!!
