(VitalNews.org) – A recent pig liver experiment may change the way medical teams work with patients who need liver transplants. This is following a few different experiments of doctors using pig organs to help patients who need transplants.
Recently, a group of surgeons did an experiment where they took a pig liver and attached it to a brain-dead human body. The results were shocking to many of the doctors because the liver began filtering the blood through the body.
The results of this experiment were released on Tuesday by The University of Pennsylvania saying that this is one of their many experiments that involve animal-to-human transplants. The details show that the pig liver served as an external piece, and wasn’t transplanted inside, somewhat like dialysis but for liver patients.
Xenotransplants or animal-to-human transplants have been unsuccessful for years because scientists and health professionals have attempted them simply because human bodies react with foreign tissues and reject them. However, this case has been successful in pulling livers from pigs that have been modified to have organs that are more like human organs.
We’ve seen other pig organs being transplanted into other humans prior to this. For example, two men received pig hearts transplanted, although both men did die within a couple of months after the transplant.
The US Food and Drug Administration is entertaining the idea of giving people who need liver or kidney transplants the option. They would be able to volunteer for experiments and studies on pig kidneys and pig livers, but a decision on this hasn’t been reached yet.
If the pig liver transplants become successful, it could make a huge difference for humans today who are on a waiting list. As of now, over 10,000 people are on a waitlist for a liver transplant.
A medical professional who has been monitoring this research for some time is Dr Parsia of UT Southwestern Medical Center. He said, “There’s lots of work into developing liver dialysis-like machines, and experiments using pig livers were tried years ago — before today’s more advanced genetic techniques.”
Vagefi spoke out saying that this combination is very intriguing and could change how many people get liver transplants or introduce a new live-dialysis experiment using it.
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