Live liver donation has been judged safe for donors who retain at least 30% of their entire liver, have livers that aren't fatty, and have no injury to the remaining liver, according to researchers at the University of Hong Kong.
Sheung-Tat Fan, MD, and colleagues reached that conclusion after studying 22 liver donors ages 18 to 51 who donated their right liver lobe to another adult between May 1996 and June 1999. The authors reported in March in Archives of Surgery that donation is safe for the donors whose livers have no more than 20% steatosis (2000;135:336-340). While animal livers that have been reduced to 10% of their original size have been demonstrated to regenerate, the authors said it is best for human donors to keep 30% of their livers. In other recent reports from journals:
* Richard N. Fine, MD, of the State University of New York at Stony Brook and colleagues reported in March in The Journal of Pediatrics that treatment with human growth hormone in growth-retarded patients with chronic renal insufficiency does not adversely affect graft function after kidney transplantation (2000;136:376-382). The study compared results in 102 growth-retarded children with data from 4913 other pediatric kidney transplant patients who did not receive the growth hormone.
* Studies conducted at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee showed that the use of the experimental drug NOX-100 with cyclosporine allowed long-term survival of transplanted hearts in rats and reduced the needed dose of cyclosporine by 75%. NOX-100 is being developed by Medinox Inc. of San Diego. Further information is available at www.medinox.com/news/press.htm, in Transplantation (2000;69:227-231), and in the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology (2000;35:114-120).
Please be aware that medical advice, diagnoses and physician references cannot be obtained from this site.