Most donors and kidney recipients for the exchange of personal health information that may influence success before agreeing on an organ transplant from a living donor, while health professionals are more reluctant according to a study published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Clinical Nephrology (CJASN). The results suggest that physicians should consider supporting and facilitating the exchange of information prior to transplantation.

The living kidney donation is a complex decision with multiple medical, legal and ethical. In many situations it may be difficult to know what personal health information is important to share and what information should remain confidential. For example, knowing that the donor has high blood pressure can affect the willingness of a recipient to accept the gift, or a potential beneficiary who is HIV positive may fear that. Information may change the willingness of donors to make a donation.

(more…)

Like a wayward driver slammed the brakes, a special class of T cells may limit the effectiveness of therapeutic vaccines for HIV by slowing the immune system too soon, the report of the University of Pittsburgh researchers at Health Sciences latest issue of PLoS ONE. Their study, the first to examine the role of regulatory T cells in therapeutic vaccines against HIV, could help researchers improve the effectiveness of these vaccines in the development of methods to prevent the brake mechanism of these cells.

Regulatory T cells (Treg) are essential because they prevent the immune system turns against itself by suppressing the immune response. Without the braking action of Treg, autoimmune disease can thrive. But if these cells are closing the immune response of a therapeutic vaccine had the opportunity to boost immunity against HIV?

(more…)

More than half of kidneys from donors in the U.S. have contracted the hepatitis C are discarded, despite the need for patients with hepatitis C, which can cause death waiting for an organ safely, Johns Hopkins research suggests.

In a study of national data published online in the American Journal of Transplantation, the researchers say that if the results are slightly worse than patients with hepatitis C receive the bodies of hepatitis C, the benefits of transplantation over time can be greater than the risk of waiting – perhaps more than a year – for a kidney hepatitis C negative.

Patients with hepatitis C are positive, 12 percent of the population suffering from renal failure and patients have a higher risk of death in dialysis compared with those without the virus, indicating the study.

“Nationally, the kidneys from infected donors are well established, and refuse to patients in need,” said transplant surgeon Dorry L. Segev, MD, PhD, associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins schools of Medicine and director the study. “Many of these kidney transplant does not use at all, in fact, the referral of patients with hepatitis C positive with an average of unnecessary wait another year for a healthy body.”

(more…)