Positivity: Doctors scramble to try to explain medical miracle
5:00AM Saturday January 26, 2008
An Australian teenage girl has become the world’s first known transplant patient to change blood groups and take on the immune system of her organ donor, doctors said yesterday, calling her a “one-in-six-billion miracle”.
Demi-Lee Brennan, now 15, received a donor liver when she was 9-years-old and her own liver failed.
“It’s like my second chance at life,” Demi-Lee told local media, recounting how her body achieved what doctors said was the holy grail of transplant surgery. “It’s kind of hard to believe.”
Her body changed blood group from O negative to O positive when she became ill while on drugs to avoid rejection of the organ by her body’s immune system.
Her new liver’s blood stem cells then invaded her body’s bone marrow to take over her entire immune system, meaning the teen no longer needs anti-rejection drugs.
Doctors from Sydney’s Westmead Children’s Hospital said they had no explanation for Demi-Lee’s recovery, detailed in the latest edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. …..
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