Kidneys

Surgeons at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center orchestrated a chain of nine kidney transplants in June that is expected to end next week. Donors include: 1. Harry Damon, 55, a firefighter from Grand Rapids, Mich., donated June 8 to Sheila Whitney, 49, a stay-at-home mom from Compton. 2. Reginal Griffin, 27, a musician from Long Beach, donated June 8 to Keenan Cheung, 44, of La Cañada Flintridge, a USC housing manager. 3. Cheung's wife, Jeanne, 43, who works at a Burbank production company, donated June 8 to Sonia Valencia, 29, of Commerce, a resource teacher.

A team of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston has engineered functional rat kidneys by stripping donor kidneys of their cells and then repopulating the remaining collagen substructures with new cells. The bioengineered kidneys produced urine in laboratory dishes and when implanted in living animals. The advance could be good news for the 100,000 Americans waiting for donor kidneys for transplant, because it suggests that someday scientists might be able to grow custom-made kidneys for people, using a patient's own cells to seed tissues, said Dr. Harald Ott, a researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Regenerative Medicine and senior author of a paper describing the discovery published online Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine . “My goal was to show it's possible,” said Ott, who previously created bioengineered rat lungs and rat hearts using the same technique.

A team of researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston has engineered functional rat kidneys by stripping donor kidneys of their cells and then repopulating the remaining collagen substructures with new cells. The bioengineered kidneys produced urine in laboratory dishes and when implanted in living animals. The advance could be good news for the 100,000 Americans waiting for donor kidneys for transplant, because it suggests that someday scientists might be able to grow custom-made kidneys for people, using a patient's own cells to seed tissues, said Dr. Harald Ott, a researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Regenerative Medicine and senior author of a paper describing the discovery published online Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine . “My goal was to show it's possible,” said Ott, who previously created bioengineered rat lungs and rat hearts using the same technique.

Carla Wensky came to her father last year for a word of advice. The woman from the small Wyoming town of Powell wanted to donate something she said she didn't really need, that she could live without. One of her kidneys. Wensky's good friend of 10 years, Kelly Eckerdt, had a kidney disease, and without a transplant or dialysis, she eventually would die. Wensky said she couldn't let that happen. That's when she asked her father about giving one of her organs away. “I said, 'Oh, no, please don't do that,' ” Ralph Wensky told The Times.

Kidneys from elderly donors can be just as effective in transplants as younger ones, a new study has found, raising the prospect of more kidneys available each year for the thousands of people who need them. About 60,000 people in the United States are on a waiting list for a transplant, but only 16,000 per year will receive one.

Dr. Jack Kevorkian offered the kidneys of a man who committed suicide with his help to be used for transplants, although it appeared doubtful the organs would be put to use. The former pathologist would not say who removed the organs or where they were being kept. The organs were removed from a 45-year-old Las Vegas man whose body was dropped off at a hospital in Pontiac the same day, Kevorkian said.

Israeli researchers have grown functioning kidneys in mice, a feat that could lead to the production of kidneys in humans, eliminating the need for transplants. The team inserted specific stem cells called "kidney precursor cells" from humans and pigs into mice. Both types of tissue grew into "perfect" kidneys the size of normal mouse kidneys, the researchers reported in the January issue of Nature Medicine. The kidneys produced urine and were sustained by blood vessels.

A kidney transplanted from a spouse is less likely to be rejected than one from an unrelated donor or a cadaver, even though spousal organs are less likely to be a good immunological match, according to immunologist Paul I. Terasaki and his colleagues at UCLA. They report in the New England Journal of Medicine that the three-year organ survival rate was 85% for kidneys from 365 spouses, 81% for kidneys from 129 living unrelated donors, 82% for kidneys from 3,368 parents and 70% for 43,341 cadaveric kidneys.

A West German businessman said Sunday he plans to set up a base in Britain selling kidneys for transplant. Rainer Adelmann, who already carries out the trade in France and West Germany, said transplant patients would have to pay between $26,000 to $52,000 per kidney. "I take only 20%," Adelmann told Independent Television News. Controversy erupted earlier this month in Britain when poor Turks were reported to have been paid $3,500 to donate their kidneys.

A doctor said in a letter carried by the British medical journal Lancet on Friday that kidneys from executed Chinese prisoners are being sold for about $17,000 to transplant patients from Hong Kong. "Kidneys are usually obtained from prisoners who are executed for offenses such as rape, burglary or political 'crimes' against the state," Dr. Siu-keung Lam of Queen Mary's Hospital in Hong Kong Lam said. "No consent for organ removal is given either by the prisoner or the family.

The bullet that struck Larney Johnson while he was playing basketball with friends punctured his kidney before lodging in his spine and immediately paralyzing him. Paramedics rushed him to California Hospital Medical Center in Los Angeles, where surgeons repaired his kidney. But three years later, he said, doctors made a startling discovery: a surgical sponge had been left behind. Johnson had to undergo a second operation to remove the sponge before spending six weeks in bed recovering.

Since ancient times, surgeons have dreamed of transplanting healthy organs into patients disabled by disease and injury, but the human body's powerful immune system stymied all such attempts, leading many observers to conclude that the procedure was impossible. But on Dec. 23, 1954, Dr. Joseph E. Murray of Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston removed a healthy kidney from 23-year-old Ronald Herrick and implanted it in his identical twin, Richard, who was dying of severe kidney disease.

Regular listeners to the "Kevin & Bean" morning show on KROQ-FM (106.7) know better than to believe everything they hear on the comedy program - whether it's about the opening of a Mall of America West, or basketball star Karl Malone playing Santa. But the topic Thursday was as serious, and personal, as life and death. Gene "Bean" Baxter announced that he's donating a kidney to longtime KROQ DJ and chief engineer Scott Mason, who first underwent a transplant in 1999, and has been on dialysis since that kidney started to fail in 2010.

David Trujillo's torso is a web of scars. Shunts in his arms, hoses in his stomach, garish gashes left from biopsies and scalpel incisions. In the summer when he goes shirtless, people often stare. Sometimes, to lighten the mood, he'll say he was bitten by a shark. In reality, his body tells the tale of multiple bouts of kidney failure. David recently received yet another transplant. No. 4. He is 29 years old. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing, only about 150 people since 1988 have received four kidney donations.

  Former Detroit Lions All-Pro and actor Alex Karras has been given only a few days to live because of kidney failure. “The entire Detroit Lions family is deeply saddened to learn of the news regarding the condition of one of our all-time greats, Alex Karras,” Lions President Tom Lewand said. “Perhaps no player in Lions history attained as much success and notoriety for what he did after his playing days as did Alex. The 77-year-old Karras has been suffering from dementia . He is among the many former NFL players suing the league regarding the treatment of head injuries . Detroit drafted him 10th overall out of Iowa in 1958 and he was a standout for 12 seasons.

Friends of Alex Karras say the former NFL great suffered kidney failure in the last two weeks and has been given only a few days to live. Tom McInerney, a Detroit-area car dealer and a friend of Karras' since the 1950s, said Karras' wife, Susan Clark, told him of her husband's failing health in a phone call Monday. The 77-year-old Karras has suffered from a variety of health problems in recent years, including dementia and cancer, and is part of the mass concussion lawsuit more than 3,000 former players have filed against the NFL. Catherine Lincoln, general manager of Clark Karras Properties, said Karras was released from Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica over the weekend and is at his California home on hospice care.

The government is investigating reports that Filipino donors were paid to give up a kidney for Japanese patients willing to pay the price, an official said today. The Health and Welfare Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the ministry started the investigation after reports that a Filipino prison inmate was paid to donate a kidney to a 51-year-old Japanese man in June.

The future of safety Kenny Easley of the Seattle Seahawks remained cloudy because of a kidney condition that was discovered in a routine Phoenix Cardinals' physical examination. Easley's agent, Leigh Steinberg, said Sunday that more tests were necessary to determine the exact nature of the problem. "We're not totally clear what's wrong," Steinberg said. "I've talked to the doctor who examined him in Seattle Saturday, but we need more tests." Steinberg called it "a serious kidney disorder."

North Carolina basketball Coach Roy Williams was recovering from surgery Wednesday to remove a tumor from his right kidney and is expected to be on the sideline when the season starts. Still, the coach might need another operation to remove another tumor from his left kidney. "I fully expect him to coach this season and for years to come," Dr. Eric Wallen said in a statement. "He could miss some practice time if we perform another procedure sometime in October, but he would be able to resume his coaching duties prior to the start of the regular season.

Total removal of a kidney during cancer treatment increases the risk of developing erectile dysfunction nearly four-fold compared with patients who have only a partial removal, researchers reported Tuesday. In light of other research, which shows that partial removal (known as partial nephrectomy) is at least as effective and probably more effective than complete removal (radical nephrectomy), it now seems reasonable that radical nephrectomy should be reserved as a last resort. Dr. Ithaar Derweesh, a urologic surgeon at the UC San Diego Health System, and his colleagues studied 264 patients who underwent a radical nephrectomy and 168 who underwent a partial nephrectomy at either the UC San Diego Medical Center or the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis between January 1988 and December 2007.