News by Subject Medicine & Health

Patients suffering sudden liver failure could in the future benefit from a new treatment that could reduce the need for transplants, research published today shows.

Investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Engineering in Medicine have developed a simple method to maintain water and water-based solutions in a liquid state at temperatures far below the usual 'freezing point' for greatly extended periods of time.

Twenty patients at Penn Medicine have been cured of the hepatitis C virus (HCV) following lifesaving kidney transplants from deceased donors who were infected with the disease, according to a study published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. The researchers also report that the kidney transplants for these 20 patients are functioning just as well as kidneys that are transplanted from similar donors without HCV.

Twenty patients who received kidneys transplanted from hepatitis C virus (HCV)-infected donors experienced HCV cure, good quality of life, and excellent renal function at one year. These findings offer additional evidence that kidneys from HCV-infected donors may be a valuable transplant resource. Results from the single-group trial are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Refined mentorship programs, further education and understanding are cited as necessary to improve work-life balance

Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have shown that gene expression analysis of blood samples taken from the recipients of transplanted kidneys can be used to better understand the mechanisms that promote repair and regeneration of the transplanted organs.