Today's awesome human trick.

[theweaselking]

Demi-Lee Brennan had a liver transplant after she suffered liver failure. Nine months later, doctors at Sydney's Westmead Children's Hospital were amazed to find the teenager's blood group had changed to the donor's blood type.

Further tests revealed the stem cells from the donor liver had penetrated her bone marrow.

Dr Michael Stormon says he and his colleagues were even more surprised when they found the girl's immune system had almost totally been replaced by that of the donor, meaning she no longer had to take anti-rejection drugs.

Comments

[torrain.livejournal.com]

*waves flag for nifty human tricks*

That's mind-boggling.

[cmseward.livejournal.com]

Cool. Here's hoping the new immune system doesn't decide to reject all of her *other* organs.

[jerril]

That is the huge risk. It's already EATEN her immune system, so I'd be worried about it.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

I saw that around yesterday, but somehow had missed the bit where the immune system had been replaced. (Which I should have deduced, actually, from the blood-type switching---doesn't it lead to various and sundry unpleasantness to have blood of a different type otherwise?)

But, yes, immensely cool. And the directions of research it can point to...

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

That's amazingly awesome!

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Sweet!

Completely off-topic, thought you might be interested in this.

[spurious-logic.livejournal.com]

That rocks. I just wonder if there will start being a need for extremely healthy people to donate.

Hitler's dream, without the bad haircut and all that marching.

[ladyfox7oaks.livejournal.com]

That would appear to be different from the other one I saw yesterday...


http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ghpKUaDjcSZQ_WFc9zXAcuDezBfQD8UBRMU01
Doctors Report Transplant Breakthrough

By ALICIA CHANG – 1 day ago

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In what's being called a major advance in organ transplants, doctors say they have developed a technique that could free many patients from having to take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives.

The treatment involved 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.

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Cool!

[sivi-volk.livejournal.com]

Also, consider the possible applications in the treatment of leukemia.

[atlasimpure.livejournal.com]

Heh, so basicly, the donor's a viral human.