A US medical team managed to transplant a pig kidney into a human body in September, Reuters and The New York Times reported on Wednesday.
No immediate rejection was noted.
The operation took place at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York.
This success, which remains to be confirmed over time, could help resolve part of the organ shortage.
The genes of the donor pig have been modified so that the tissues no longer contain a certain molecule that promotes rejection.
As for the recipient, it was a brain dead person whose family gave their consent for this test to take place.
The recipient's creatine level returned to normal after the surgery.
It is an indicator of how well a kidney is functioning.
The animal's organ started working again "immediately"
The New York Times, which also relays this information, explains that the kidney was transplanted outside the abdomen for the experiment.
The director of the establishment explains that if the organ works in this way, "it should be operational inside".
Above all, he said he was positively surprised by the reaction of the transplant recipient's body.
Kidneys taken from deceased people usually take a long time to function, sometimes several weeks.
In this case, however, he set off “immediately”.
Before thinking about generalizing the technique, one last major step must be taken.
The pig kidney test lasted only 54 hours.
One, or even much longer experiments will be necessary before considering that this technique massifies in humans.
Moreover, as BFMTV reminds us, the advantage of this technique, if its success is confirmed, would not only be to hope to considerably shorten the waiting times for a graft.
This would open up prospects for even more sensitive transplants such as that of the heart.
Not only is this organ quite similar in humans and pigs.
But, in addition, the technique for carrying out such an operation could, according to researchers, be mastered very soon.
The success of the kidney transplant was seen, as early as 2019, as a necessary step before achieving a successful heart transplant.
