Posted on

Transplant medicine contends with organ shortage and pandemic-related disruptions

Loading

By Caitlyn Stulpin

Transplant medicine and the field of transplant infectious diseases have faced numerous disruptions and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to experts.

“The number of transplants declined transiently during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic but are now at the pre-pandemic level and growing overall,” Sarah Taimur, MD, associate professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, told Healio | Infectious Disease News. Read the full story in Healio.

Loading
Posted on

Study Suggests Increase in Brain Aging in Those With Type 1 Diabetes

Loading

— But this didn’t seem to translate into Alzheimer’s disease-related neurodegeneration

By Kristen Monaco

Patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D) may have advanced brain aging compared with those without T1D, though this didn’t come with early signs of Alzheimer’s disease-related neurodegeneration, according to a cohort study.

Participants included in the observational EDIC study had consistently higher Spatial Pattern for Recognition (SPARE)-Brain Age scores compared with controls without diabetes, indicating about 6 additional years of brain aging (β = 6.16 and β = 1.04, respectively, P<0.001), reported Mohamad Habes, PhD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, and colleagues. Read more in MedPage Today.

Loading
Posted on

Three-year graft survival achieved for HCV kidneys

Loading

By Mark E. Neumann

Deceased donor kidneys with the hepatitis C virus can show graft survival beyond 1 year when transplanted into patients without the virus, according to a recently published study.

The study, conducted at two large transplant centers in the U.S., “provides important evidence that HCV-RNA [positive] kidney transplants function well beyond [1] year and that complications, such as rejection and [donor-specific antibodies] DSA, did not occur at elevated rates,” Vishnu Potluri, MD, MPH, of the renal-electrolyte and hypertension division at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues wrote. Read more in Healio.

Loading
Posted on

38-year-old has had 3 hearts: ‘It’s a third chance’

Loading

By Laura Williamson

Melanie Wickersheim has no memory of the first time her heart gave her trouble. She was an infant, and her pediatric myocarditis – an inflammation of the muscular walls of the heart – resolved before she was old enough to know anything had ever been wrong.

She spent the first 10 years of her life like any other kid in Los Angeles, believing she was perfectly healthy. Until suddenly, she wasn’t. She couldn’t hold down food. She felt so weak, she could barely walk. “I remember trying to walk across a parking lot. I had to stop at every light pole to take a breath, panting for air,” she said. Read the story in American Heart Association News.

Loading
Posted on

Healthy plant-based diet shows potential for prevention of cognitive decline

Loading

By Emma Bascom

Adhering to a healthy plant-based diet for 3 years was associated with a reduced risk for cognitive impairment, but following an unhealthy plant-based diet was linked to a greater risk, according to recent study results.

Previous studies lack evidence on how changes in plant-based dietary quality impact the risk for cognitive impairment, Kai Ding, of Wuhan University’s School of Public Health in China, and colleagues wrote in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Read more in Healio.

Loading
Posted on

U-M Health performs its first heart transplant after cardiac death

Loading
The patient received a new heart after years of severe symptoms due to a congenital heart condition

By Michigan Medicine

Newswise — As the number of heart transplants performed across the United States continues to grow, surgeons at the University of Michigan Health Frankel Cardiovascular Center are taking advantage of technology that could increase its transplant yield by as much as 30%.

In March, transplant surgeons in Ann Arbor completed the health system’s first heart transplant using an organ from a donor who had recently died — a process called donation after circulatory death, or DCD. The patient, a man in his 30s, received the heart after years of deteriorating due to congenital heart failure.
Read more from Michigan Medicine.

Loading
Posted on

Afternoon exercise linked to greatest HbA1c reduction in type 2 diabetes

Photo by Arek Adeoye on Unsplash
Loading

By Michael Monostra

Physical activity performed in the afternoon could yield a greater reduction in HbA1c than physical activity during other times in the day, according to an analysis of data from the Look AHEAD trial published in Diabetes Care.

“This is the first large-scale epidemiological study demonstrating that timing of unsupervised physical activity is associated with long-term improvement in blood glucose in type 2 diabetes,” Jingyi Qian, PhD, associate physiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Roeland J.W. Middelbeek, MD, MSc, assistant investigator and staff physician at the Joslin Diabetes Center and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, told Healio. Read the full story in Healio.

Loading
Posted on

Kidney transplants from COVID-positive donors are safe: Study

Loading

By Ashleigh Hollowell

Kidney transplant recipients did not have worsened outcomes after receiving an organ from a COVID-19 positive donor, a study published May 30 in JAMA has found. 

Researchers studied outcomes from 45,912 patients who received kidneys from 35,851 deceased coronavirus-positive donors between March 1, 2020, and March 30, 2023. Read more in Becker’s Hospital Review.



Loading
Posted on

Study: Racial gaps in home dialysis persist despite Medicare intervention

Loading

By Shawn M. Carter
Racial gaps in home dialysis treatment still exist among patients with kidney disease, even after Medicare introduced a new payment structure to alleviate critical barriers to care, according to results of a recently published study. Congress approved the Medicare End-Stage Renal Disease prospective payment system (PPS) in 2011 to control costs and increase access to home peritoneal dialysis and hemodialysis (HHD). But despite modest increases seen in dialysis availability and patient utilization following the reform, “significant racial disparities in home dialysis remain,” Virginia Wang, PhD, faculty at the Duke University School of Medicine and lead research author, wrote in the study. Read the full story in Healio.

Loading