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In the new study, published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, doctors successfully altered patients’ immune systems to allow them to accept kidneys from incompatible donors. Significantly more of those patients were still alive after eight years than patients who had remained on waiting lists or received a kidney transplanted from a deceased donor.
The method, known as desensitization, “has the potential to save many lives,” said Dr. Jeffery Berns, a kidney specialist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine and the president of the National Kidney Foundation.
It could slash the wait times for thousands of people and for some, like Clint Smith, a 56-year-old lawyer in New Orleans, mean the difference between receiving a transplant and spending the rest of their lives ondialysis.
The procedure, Mr. Smith said, “changed my life.”