An Australian teenage girl has become the world's first known
transplant patient to change blood groups and take on the immune
system of her organ donor, doctors said on Friday, calling her a
"one-in-six-billion miracle."
Surgeons in a file photo. [Agencies]
Demi-Lee Brennan, now 15, received a donor liver when she was 9
years old and her own liver failed.
"It's like my second chance at life," Brennan told local media,
recounting how her body achieved what doctors said was the holy
grail of transplant surgery. "It's kind of hard to believe."
Brennan's body changed blood group from O negative to O positive
when she became ill while on drugs to avoid rejection of the organ
by her body's immune system.
Her new liver's blood stem cells then invaded her body's bone
marrow to take over her entire immune system, meaning the teen no
longer needs anti-rejection drugs.
Doctors from Sydney's Westmead Childrens' Hospital said they had
no explanation for Brennan's recovery, detailed in the latest
edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.
"There was no precedent for this having happened at any other
time, so we were sort of flying by the seat of our pants," Michael
Stormon, a pediatric hepatologist, told local radio.
Stuart Dorney, the hospital's former transplant unit head, said
Brennan's treatment could lead to breakthroughs in organ transplant
treatment, because normally the immune system of recipients
attacked the transplanted tissue.
"We now need to go back over everything that happened to
Demi-Lee and see why, and if it can be replicated," said
Dorney.
"We think because we used a young person's liver and Demi-Lee
had low white blood cells, that could have been a reason," he told
the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
Rejection is normally treated with a combination of drugs,
although chronic rejection is irreversible.
Only seven-in-10 transplant operations in Australia are
successful after a five-year period due to rejection
complications.
(Agencies January 26, 2008)
