DOHA: Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar and New York have discovered a new test to detect whether a patients’ immune system is rejecting a transplanted kidney.
The new test, if fully developed, could one day help doctors determine whether a patient is rejecting the new kidney sooner than the test currently used in hospitals.
Another advantage is that the newly discovered method uses urine analysis, while the current test involves taking biopsy material directly from the implanted kidney using a syringe, which can cause discomfort and bleeding.
The test is described in a research paper published in the prestigious Journal of the American Society of Nephrology and was conducted by a team of WCMC-Q researchers led by Dr Karsten Suhre, Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, in partnership with colleagues at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, led by Dr Manikkam Suthanthiran, Stanton Griffis Distinguished Professor of Medicine.
Organ transplants are perceived as foreign bodies by the organ recipient’s immune system, which will then try to destroy it. This can be controlled with immunosuppressive drugs but they must be administered carefully because they make patients more susceptible to infections and malignancy. Moreover, transplant recipients can experience rejection despite the immunosuppressive drugs.
The new test works by analysing the urine for metabolites, which are substances produced by biochemical processes in the body. Some metabolites are only produced under certain conditions and can thereby be used as markers for disease. Dr Suhre’s team analysed a total of 1,516 samples from 241 kidney transplant recipients and found that they could identify a particular set of metabolites that indicated the implanted organ was being rejected.
Dr Suhre said, “We compared our results against the results of traditional biopsy tests and found that our test could predict rejection of the kidney very reliably, with a level of accuracy around 80 percent at this early stage. A great aspect of this research is that here in Qatar we have the state-of-the-art equipment, high-tech computing power and the expertise to carry out very detailed sample analysis, which complements the research of our colleagues in New York and allows us to conduct research together in a very synergistic way.”
The new test can be carried out in approximately 24 hours, whereas the biopsy results can take longer. A further advantage is that the new test is able to determine the health of the entire kidney, while a biopsy might take material from a healthy part of the kidney and will therefore fail to discover that other parts of the organ are deteriorating.
The Peninsula
