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Japanese Doctors Perform World’s First Living Donor Lung Transplant on COVID-19 Patient

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“A COVID-19 patient in Japan has received the world’s first lung transplant from living donors.

Receiving transplant lung tissue from her son and husband, the patient underwent an 11-hour operation at Kyoto University Hospital to receive her transplant last Wednesday.

The woman who underwent the operation contracted COVID-19 late last year. According to Kyoto University Hospital, she spent months on a life support machine acting as an artificial lung, because hers had become no longer functional. It’s expected that she’ll recover from last week’s operation within months.”

Read the full story, here.

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‘Amazing’ recovery of donations, transplant rate seen during pandemic

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Organ donation and kidney transplants have made an “amazing” recovery from the worst days of the pandemic, a speaker said here, with more than 33,000 kidney transplants performed in 2020.

“There were some parts of the Northeast where there were zero living donor transplants done for weeks,” Matthew Cooper, MD, director of Kidney and Pancreas Transplantation at Medstar Georgetown Transplant Institute and professor of surgery at Georgetown University School of Medicine, said during a presentation at the virtual National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meetings. “It was amazing how the country regained … the key was getting organs to areas where transplants could happen.”

Read the full article, here.

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Coronavirus (COVID-19) Information and Updates

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“Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers are working tirelessly to find ways to better understand, treat and eventually eliminate COVID-19 and the illness that results from infection. New discoveries and observations from Johns Hopkins that we share here, especially those related to clinical therapies, are almost uniformly early in concept. They will require rigorous research, testing and peer review before solid conclusions for clinical care and disease prevention can be made.

In addition, Johns Hopkins researchers are conducting a variety of clinical trials to find new ways to detect, prevent and treat COVID-19. These trials include studies involving Johns Hopkins employees, people who have COVID-19 and analysis of collected data about the illness. Results of these clinical trials will be available when data is analyzed, peer-reviewed and published.”

You can stay up to date on information and resources, here.

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Coronavirus antibody tests have had plenty of problems. Hopkins is developing a better, at-home version

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Plenty of people want to know whether they ever had COVID-19, and public officials need to know. But existing antibody tests that look for markers of the disease caused by the coronavirus have not met the challenge, with accuracy, cost and convenience problems.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere, however, are working on the next generation of these tests that can be done at home.

“We wanted to develop something you could use on your kids,” said Netz Arroyo, a Hopkins assistant professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences who joined with a biomedical engineer and a biophysicist to repurpose a common medical device to look for the virus.

“It would be easy and you may not even have to poke their finger every time,” he said. “Now you have to go to a lab and have a blood draw.”

Read the full article, here.

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Immunocompromised And Concerned About The Vaccine? Here’s What You Need To Know

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“Lots of people have questions about getting vaccinated against COVID-19. That includes the millions of Americans with weakened immune systems that put them at higher risk of severe disease if they do get infected with the coronavirus.

“Patients want to know whether it’s safe to get it and, if they do get it, which one should they get? And of course, they also have concerns about how it can affect their own condition as well,” says Dr. Sharon Dowell, a rheumatologist at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., who says she has been getting a barrage of questions from patients lately.

People can be immunocompromised for a wide range of reasons. Some are being treated with immunosuppressive medications for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Crohn’s disease or psoriasis. Others are organ transplant recipients on powerful anti-rejection medications or cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

Dowell and other doctors say vaccinating immunocompromised patients is especially important. But it also raises special considerations that these patients should discuss with their doctor beforehand. Here’s what you need to know.”

Read the full article, here.

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Outcomes among Transplant Recipients Hospitalized Due to COVID-19

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“Due to chronic immunosuppression as well as the presence of numerous comorbidities, the risk of developing severe COVID-19 may be high in kidney transplant recipients. Researchers in the United States, Italy, and Spain conducted a retrospective cohort study to examine the clinical outcomes among kidney transplant recipients to identify predictors of poor clinical outcomes. Results of the study were reported in the American Journal of Transplantation [2020;20(11):3140-3148].

The study was led by Paolo Cravedi, MD, PhD, division of nephrology, department of medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York. The cohort included 144 kidney transplant recipients who were hospitalized due to COVID-19 at 12 transplant centers in North America and Europe. The 12 centers were participating in the TANGO International Transplant Consortium. All kidney transplant recipients ≥18 years of age with a functioning allograft who were admitted to a hospital between March 2 and May 15, 2020, were included.”

Read the full study, here.

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Cancer Patients and Transplant Recipients Need Both COVID-19 Vaccine Doses

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“Natural immunity and vaccine responses may be weaker in people with immune suppression, so they should get their second dose promptly

A majority of people with cancer and organ transplant recipients are capable of mounting an immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and can gain immunity from COVID-19 vaccines, according to recent research. But people with immune suppression may have slower and weaker responses to natural infection or vaccination, so it is especially important that they get their second dose on schedule.

People with serious immune suppression are at risk for more severe complications and death due to COVID-19. This group includes cancer patients who use immune-suppressing therapy, transplant recipients who take immunosuppressive drugs to prevent organ rejection and people with AIDS (advanced, uncontrolled HIV disease).

It is well known that immunosuppressed people can have weaker immune responses to natural infection and vaccination, but SARS-CoV-2 immunity in this population is not well understood. What’s more, cancer patients on treatment and other people with advanced immune suppression were generally excluded from COVID-19 vaccine trials (though people with well-controlled HIV could enroll).”

Read the full article, here.

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American Kidney Fund Applauds White House Decision to Distribute COVID-19 Vaccines Directly to ESRD Patients at Dialysis Clinics

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“The American Kidney Fund (AKF) today issues the following statement in response to the Biden-Harris administration’s announcement that COVID-19 vaccines will be distributed directly to end-stage renal disease (ESRD, or kidney failure) patients at dialysis clinics:

“On behalf of the 555,000 Americans who rely on dialysis to survive, AKF is grateful to the Biden-Harris administration for announcing its plans to distribute COVID-19 vaccines directly to ESRD patients at the nation’s dialysis clinics. AKF recently met with Congressional and Biden-Harris administration officials to recommend this action. Vaccine distribution for ESRD patients at dialysis clinics will be a major step forward in protecting people with kidney failure from COVID-19 and in addressing disparities in our health care system that disproportionately impact the kidney patient community.”

Read the full article, here.

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