Washington – An American woman who received a pork kidney transplant had to be operated to remove the organ because her body began to reject it after four months, which however constitutes a record of time, the hospital that made the intervention announced on Friday.
Towana Looney, a 53 -year -old woman from Alabama, had been transplanted at the end of November with a genetically modified pork kidneyan still very experimental practice but allows to house the hope of responding to chronic organ shortages.
The fact of having to remove the kidney demonstrates how far the goal is, but the stage is encouraging: The organ performed its functions for a record time of 130 daysthat is, more than four months.
“For the first time since 2016, I was able to enjoy my friends and my family when you have time, without having to plan everything around dialysis treatments,” the patient said in a statement shared by the Langone Hospital of the University of New York.
Looney added that it is “very grateful (…) although the result was not the one they expected.”
The woman donated one of her kidneys to her mother in 1999 and had been on dialysis for eight years after a complication during pregnancy damaged the one who had left.
Given the impossibility of finding a compatible donor, he was authorized to receive a genetically modified kidney. The operation was carried out on November 25, 2024.
Despite the encouraging initial results, “at the beginning of April he experienced a decrease in renal function due to acute rejection,” said his surgeon, Robert Montgomery, in the statement.