Heart disease is an umbrella term including blood vessel disease, heart rhythm problems, and congenital heart defects. These diseases become the number one killer of both men and women worldwide. Sometimes, patients with heart disease need a heart transplantation, which is the ultimate choice.
Heart transplantation is a surgery that removes a diseased heart and replaces it with a healthy heart from a deceased donor. This surgery was first performed in a person with severe heart disease in 1967. It has been 50 years since the first human heart transplant.
Now, on the 50th anniversary of heart transplantation, scientists presented a new method that reduces the risk of donor heart rejection at Heart Failure 2017 and the 4th World Congress on Acute Heart Failure. The method desensitizes patient antibodies that control the likelihood of rejecting a donor's heart. This technique is developed by scientists from the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. (Cusabio offers Biotin conjugated antibody.)
Before transplantation, concentrations of anti-HLA antibodies in the blood of heart transplant candidates are analyzed. These anti-HLA antibodies may attach to donor HLA antigens and trigger rejection of the organ. At the time of transplantation, a virtual crossmatch is performed to identify whether the patient's anti-HLA antibodies are directed against the donor's specific HLA antigen -- if yes, these antibodies are called donor specific anti-HLA antibody (DSA). Patients with high DSA levels have an increased risk of donor heart rejection.
In order to decrease the rejection risk in these patients, scientists at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital set out to find desensitization methods. They investigated 523 patients: 46% had no DSA, 17% had low DSA, and 37% had high DSA.
All of the participants received anti-thymocyte globulins and traditional immunosuppressive therapy. Furthermore, participants with low DSA were given intravenous immunoglobulins, whereas those with high DSA were treated with plasmapheresis before and after transplantation.
The researchers found that participants in all the groups had similar survival time after transplantation. They believed that the desensitization technique tested in this study could reduce the risk of donor heart rejection.
Heart Failure is the annual congress of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). The 4th World Congress on Acute Heart Failure is part of the main programme of Heart Failure 2017, which was held from Saturday 29 April to Tuesday 02 May 2017 in Paris, France.
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