How can owners and their friends

Shortly before the rejection began, Looney had suffered an infection related to her prior time on dialysis and her immune-suppressing anti-rejection drugs were slightly lowered, Montgomery said. At the same time, her immune system was reactivating after the transplant. Those factors may have combined to damage the new kidney, he said.Rejection is a common threat after transplants of human organs, too, and sometimes cost patients their new organ. Doctors face a balancing act in tamping down patients’ immune systems just enough to preserve the new organ while allowing them to fight infection.

It’s an even bigger challenge with xenotransplantation. While these pig organs have been altered to help prevent immediate rejection, patients still require immune-suppressing drugs. Which drugs are best to prevent different, later forms of rejection isn’t clear, said Dr. Tatsuo Kawai of Massachusetts General Hospital, another xenotransplant pioneer. Different research groups are using different combinations, he said.“When we have more experience, we’ll know what kind of immunosuppression is really necessary for xenotransplant,” Kawai saidMontgomery said Looney’s experience offers valuable lessons for the upcoming clinical trial.

Making xenotransplant ultimately work “is going to be won with singles and doubles, not swinging for the fence every time we do one of these,” he said.The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A woman who received a

is back on dialysis because surgeons had to remove the gradually failing organ after just 47 days.ATLANTA (AP) — Natasha Nelson, a 35-year old entrepreneur in Stone Mountain, Georgia, didn’t have an innate sense of social norms. She didn’t know why people meeting for the first time would choose to engage in small talk instead of deep conversations, or why people like to make their beds.

Then, a few years ago, she was diagnosed with, just after her youngest daughter received the same.

“If your life has always felt like it was in chaos and you don’t feel comfortable and you don’t feel like you thrive and you just feel like you’re constantly surviving and going from one thing to the next, what you got to lose?” Nelson said, encouraging people to seek a diagnosis.Common signs of autism include trouble with social communication and a fixation on certain routines or topics — Nelson says “people have become my special interest now” — and may go unnoticed during someone’s childhood.