NEW YORK (Feb. 1, 2012) -- Physicians at three transplant centers have found in a pilot study that a majority of children who receive liver tissue from a parent can eventually stop using immunosuppression (anti-rejection) medications safely. These drugs, which tamp down natural immune function, have been linked to a bevy of complications, including cancer, diabetes, hypertension and kidney failure.
In the study, published in the Jan. 18, 2012, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the researchers also found three clinical factors that appear to predict which pediatric liver transplant patients are most likely to do well if the medications are withdrawn.
"These findings bring us closer to the Holy Grail of transplant medicine, which is to give a patient an organ and then taper off use of drugs that prevent rejection," says co-author Dr. Steven J. Lobritto, associate clinical professor of pediatrics and medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and medical director of pediatric liver transplantation at NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital.
"We try to minimize use of these drugs as much as we can now, but all of us in the pediatric transplant community would love to identify those patients who can go off the medications completely and those who shouldn't," he says.
Several of Dr. Lobritto's pediatric patients participated in the study, which was led by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). Patients from UCSF and from Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago also participated.
These institutions and others expect to launch a larger, 150-patient study to investigate withdrawal from immunosuppression in a wider variety of pediatric liver transplant patients. The technique has been tried in transplanted adults but without significant success, Dr. Lobritto adds.
The current study enrolled 20 children and foun
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| Contact: Doug Feingold pr@nyp.org 212-305-5587 New York- Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center Source:Eurekalert |