The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared the way for the first trial to see if human embryonic stem cells can treat people safely, Reuters reports. Geron Corp, a California biotechnology company, said it plans a clinical trial to try to use the stem cells to re-grow nerve tissue in patients with crushed, but [Sign in to read the full article...]
The Jan. 19 issue of Newsweek magazine details an investigation into organ trafficking by Berkeley anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who spent more than a decade tracking the illegal sale of human organs across the globe. Posing as a medical doctor in some places and a would-be kidney buyer in others, she has linked gangsters, clergymen and [Sign in to read the full article...]
Kidney disease in African-Americans often goes undetected until the latest stages, according to new research from the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson reported by HealthDay News. In a study that included more than 3,400 black Americans who were interviewed and given physical examinations, about 20 percent were found to have chronic kidney disease, [Sign in to read the full article...]
A new urine test that can detect a common cause of kidney transplant failure may lead to better diagnosis and treatment of patients with polyomavirus nephropathy, which affects about 9 percent of kidney transplant patients, HealthDay News reports. Polyomaviruses are harmless to healthy adults but can cause serious problems for people with compromised immune systems. [Sign in to read the full article...]
Though immune cells normally cluster around the fringes of transplanted cells and invade them, an unexpected discovery made by an Australian scientist has the potential to alter the body’s response to anything it perceives as not ‘self’, such as a tissue or organ transplant, according to a report from Medical News Today. Stacey Walters, an [Sign in to read the full article...]