A recent The Annals of Thoracic Surgery journal study reports that the survival rate of lung transplant (LT) recipients who experienced respiratory failure following infection with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was not significantly different than the survival rates among patients who received an LT due to other lung etiologies. Read more in News Medical Life Sciences.
Despite a lower overall mortality rate, lung transplant recipients remain at high risk for severe disease and death from the COVID-19 omicron variant compared with both the general population and other respiratory infections.
“[The omicron variant] is shown to be associated with lower severity of illness in the general population, particularly among the vaccinated, compared to the preceding variants,” Jamie Hum, DNP, lung transplant nurse practitioner in the division of pulmonary and critical care medicine and with the Lung Transplant Program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and colleagues wrote in Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Read more in Healio.
Northwestern Medicine scientists have discovered a potential therapeutic target in the donor lung that can prevent primary graft dysfunction (PGD) in lung transplant recipients, according to findings published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI).
GR Scott Budinger, MD, chief of Pulmonary and Critical Care in the Department of Medicine and the Ernest S. Bazley Professor of Airway Diseases, was senior author of the study.
Read more in Medical Xpress.
— In small sample, donors gave infection to lung recipients, yet not to other organ recipients
Three U.S. lung transplant recipients contracted COVID-19 from their new organs, including one patient who died and two patients who transmitted the virus to others, researchers found.
From March 2020 to March 2021, nine SARS-CoV-2 infected donors donated organs to 19 recipients. Three individuals who received bilateral lungs acquired infections from the donors but the remaining 16 recipients of extra-pulmonary organs did not, reported Rebecca Free, MD, MPH, of the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues.
Read more in MedPage Today.