A 53-year-old resident of the US state of Alabama, Tovana Looney, has become the only person in the world who has been living with a functioning pig organ for 61 days. It is a transplanted pig kidney. This was reported by the international agency Associated Press (AP), according to UNN.
Details
According to the news outlet, Tovana Looney calls herself a superwoman and laughs as she says she outruns family members during long walks in New York City.
It is noted that Tovana Looney donated a kidney to her mother in 1999. Subsequent pregnancy complications caused high blood pressure. This damaged the remaining kidney, which eventually failed, which is incredibly rare in donors.
The woman spent eight years on dialysis before doctors concluded that she would likely never receive a donor organ - she had developed an ultra-high level of antibodies abnormally set up to attack another human kidney.
According to the AP, when Looney decided to experiment with a pig, no one knew how it would work in a human who is highly sensitive to these superactive antibodies.
If you saw her on the street, you wouldn't think she was the only person in the world walking around with a pig organ functioning inside
At present, Robert Montgomery assesses the functioning of Luna's kidneys as “completely normal”. Doctors hope that she will be able to return home to Gadsden, Alabama, in about a month.
There are more than 100,000 people on the transplant list in the United States, most of whom need kidneys, and thousands die before they get them
“Until now, pig organ transplants have been a 'compassionate use' case, an experiment that the Food and Drug Administration allows only in special circumstances for people who have no other options,” the news agency reported.
Recall
Doctors at the Heart Institute of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine performed the first heart transplant in Ukraine. The first heart transplant was performed seven years ago abroad. The donor was a woman from Bila Tserkva who died of a stroke.