Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Can a pig’s heart save your life?

Heart transplants are reserved for people who have severe heart failure, have tried all the medical therapy and all the cardiac procedure but have not responded appropriately. Their heart is pumping but not enough and a heart transplant is the only procedure that will ensure they live. But there is one downfall to being on the waiting list for a transplant, that is the wait. People have had their conditions worsen or, to make it even worse, some have died waiting for their transplant. Using a pig’s heart can bridge the gap for those who have exhausted their options and have been waiting for a long time.

It is proposed that a heart pig transplant can prolong your life, which can be a bridge while someone continues to wait in the transplant waiting list, for a compatible human heart to become available. Non-primate research heart transplants have shown to survive beyond 6 months. While the exact criteria for candidacy is extensive, it can still be life changing for those who become eligible.

To date this has been performed twice. The first successful transplant of a genetically modified pig heart into a human was performed by the University of Maryland School of Medicine in 2022 to a 57-year-old male who was suffering of terminal heart disease. This patient lived for 2 months post-surgery. Ultimately, this patient did not die from typical signs of rejection from the pig heart.  Rather, histology showed some cardiac cell necrosis, interstitial swelling, and red blood cells leaking out of vessels, but no signs of small blood vessel clots. The University of Maryland School of Medicine is still attempting to identify the source that led to failure.

The second successful transplant of a genetically modified pig heart into human was performed in September 2023 in a 58-year-old male patient with a history of end-stage heart failure. This patient had already been resuscitated once; this was his last chance at life since he has not a candidate for a traditional human heart transplant.  In the end, he rejected the genetically modified pig heart in a similar way to how it occurs with human organs and passed away 6 weeks later.  

Although these 2 procedures have been semi-successful, in that I mean the patient surviving through surgery but neither patient living past 7 weeks, as preliminary research suggested at least six months. I am curious if they have plans in performing another transplant and about what other animal organ transplant this is a capable of prolonging the life of patients who have been suffering waiting in the transplant list.

 

References

Griffith, B. P., Goerlich, C. E., Singh, A. K., Rothblatt, M., Lau, C. L., Shah, A., Lorber, M., Grazioli, A., Saharia, K. K., Hong, S. N., Joseph, S. M., Ayares, D., & Mohiuddin, M. M. (2022). Genetically modified porcine-to-human cardiac xenotransplantation. New England Journal of Medicine, 387(1), 35–44. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa2201422

Pierson, R. N., 3rd, Burdorf, L., Madsen, J. C., Lewis, G. D., & D’Alessandro, D. A. (2020). Pig-to-human heart transplantation: Who goes first? American Journal of Transplantation : Official Journal of the American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons, 20(10), 2669–2674. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajt.15916

 

3 comments:

  1. I think this subject specifically has always interested me so much and it has been a very controversial discussion worldwide and even in classes I have taken in the past. I personally consider more money and resources should be directed to this kind of innovative procedures because although not successful yet it can grow to be one of the best best human saving procedures out there. you might want to check out resources such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which I found provides updates on the latest research on xenotransplantation and related clinical trials.

    National Institutes of Health. (2023). Xenotransplantation: The promise and the challenges. https://www.nih.gov/

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  2. I believe that xenotransplantation specifically with a pig heart, can be possible. Especially since we already use organs from other animals including pigs. With the transplant of a genetically modified pig's heart for a human heart, it appears more research is required to ensure that the donor does not reject the modified heart, but also so the modified heart does not cause any issues after plantation. All in all, I believe that this is a very possible solution to a donor problem and can be very useful when donor hearts become thin and spread out.

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  3. I really believe that this is an amazing start to helping save lives. Those 6 months can be life saving and detrimental for people waiting on the donor list. I think as technology advances and we begin to start making new cardiac tissue and developing new ways of doing these types of procedures we will be able to extend a lot more lives, not only for those on a heart transplant list, but those that just need a few more years to be with family and loved ones. Hopefully we are able to understand the mechanism on why the pig transplant can only last so long, and hopefully just use these hearts instead of waiting for another free heart.

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