Pig kidney removed from US woman after record-setting 4 months
Towana Looney’s body eventually rejected the animal organ, but previous recipients of such transplants did not survive past two months
Doctors have had to remove the pig kidney implanted in an American woman after her body rejected it, but her four months living with the animal’s organ set a record, the hospital that performed the operation said Friday.
Towana Looney, a woman in her fifties from the southern state of Alabama, had received the genetically modified pig kidney on November 25 in New York.
The highly experimental procedure had fuelled optimism that animal kidneys might prove a usable source amid a chronic shortage of available human kidneys.
Her body’s eventual rejection of the transplant showed that the reliable use of animal organs remains a distant goal, but doctors took some hope since the pig kidney did its blood-filtering work for 130 days before the body began rejecting it.
A handful of patients had previously received pig kidneys, but none had survived more than two months.
Doctors said Looney, who is again receiving dialysis treatment, remains a candidate to receive a human kidney if one becomes available.
