A SERVICE
OF 
Science
Briefs
June 15, 1998 · by TNN Medical Reporter Virginia
Baskerville
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Procedures for juvenile organ donation, the engineering of new bladders
in animals, and the role of diabetes in heart transplant patients are the focus
of recent reports.
- Investigators at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia reported in June in
Pediatrics (1998;101:1049-1052) that the number of pediatric organ
donors could increase by 42% if organs were removed before the children were
declared brain-dead. Tracy Koogler and Andrew T. Costarino Jr. analyzed the
records of 6307 children admitted to intensive care at the hospital from
January 1992 to July 1996. Of 111 patients who had life support withdrawn, 28%
qualified to become nonheartbeating donors. Of 84 brain-dead children, 58%
donated organs. Had the patients with withdrawn life support donated organs at
the same rate as the brain-dead patients, the number of donated organs would
have been increased by 42%. The article also discussed ethical issues related
to nonheartbeating organ donation.
- Scientists reported at the annual meeting of the American Urological
Association that they have engineered new bladders that work as well as healthy
organs in dogs and rats. To create the new bladders, scientists regrew cells
from the original healthy bladders of dogs, fashioned them around a polymer
matrix, and implanted the matrix. Bladders reportedly began working four to six
weeks after implantation and developed normal blood vessels and bladder nerves.
- Diabetes may lead to the development of coronary artery disease in patients
with transplanted hearts, a study in rats has suggested. Khanh Hoang, MD, and
colleagues at Stanford University School of Medicine and elsewhere performed
heart transplants in rats and then induced diabetes in some of them. Severe
transplant-related coronary artery disease was observed only in the rats with
diabetes. Although some of the rats with diabetes were fed a high-fructose diet
to worsen their dyslipidemia, the fructose feeding showed no independent
contribution to the development of heart disease, Dr. Hoang reported on June 2
in Circulation (1998;97:2160-2168).
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