A woman left without the transplanted pork kidney set a record that gives doctors hope / how she got to have kidney problems

Doctors were forced to extract the pork kidney that had been implanted to a US woman, after being rejected by the body, but the four months she lived with the animal's body set a record, the hospital that performed the operation, according to AFP, announced on Friday.

Towana Looney, a woman over 50 years old in Alabama, received a genetically modified pig kidney on November 25, in New York. The experimental procedure had increased optimism that animal kidneys could prove a usable source in the context of the chronic human lack of human kidney available for transplantation.

The woman's body eventually rejected the transplant, which showed that the viability of such a procedure remains a distant goal, but for doctors there is some hope, because the pork kidney has performed the blood filter function for 130 days before the body begins to reject it.

In the past, only a few patients had received pork kidneys, but none of them survived.

Doctors said that Looney, who returned to dialysis, remains a candidate to receive a human kidney when he is available.

In the statement issued by Nyu Langone Hospital in New York, Towana Looney expressed her gratitude for her care from the medical staff there.

“For the first time after 2016, I enjoyed time with friends and family without planning dialysis treatments,” the woman said.

“Although the result is one that no one wanted, I know I learned many of the 130 days spent with a pig kidney-and that it can help and inspire many others,” Looney added.

Donated a kidney and the other was affected by complications associated with task

In 1999, Looney donated a kidney to his mother. As the complications associated with the pregnancy were to affect the remaining kidney, it came to dialysis for eight years.

Doctors have not been able to find a compatible human donor, and her condition deteriorated, but eventually she received approval to implant a genetically modified pig kidney.

Although the first results were encouraging, “at the beginning of April, he presented a reduction in the kidney function due to acute rejection,” said Robert Montgomery, the head of the Surgery Section and the director of the Transplant Institute of the New York Hospital.

“What the episode of rejection has triggered after a long period of stability is actively investigated, but came after a decrease in the immunosuppression regime to treat an infection with her pig kidney,” the doctor explained.

The treatment aims to inhibit the body's immune system to prevent it from attacking the implanted organ, but it also weakens the body's ability to combat external infections.

The decision to remove the pork kidney was jointly taken by Looney and her doctors, to keep the “future transplant possibilities”.

Doctors said the woman recovered quickly after the surgery on April 4, was discharged on the fifth day after the surgery, “she returns home, in Alabama, and feels good.”