Word: donors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Disorders in men, the problem in 40% of infertile couples, used to be considered a lost cause. "Until two years ago, couples in which the man was infertile were told to find a sperm donor," says Dr. Michael McClure, chief of the reproductive-sciences branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. "Or they were essentially advised about adoption. Things were that dismal. But now a significant portion of male infertility may be treatable...
...declines sharply, simply because their eggs have become too old to be viable. But their bodies can still sustain a pregnancy, and many could give birth if they could just get access to healthy eggs. Until now the only option has been to use an egg from a younger donor, but some day they may be able to use their own frozen eggs...
...sees is this: "The mystery was not about [the body's] rejection." It is about the intermingling of cells, the achievement of a peaceful truce between the patient and the donated organ. Rather than beating the patient's immune system into submission with drugs until it accepts the donor organ, Starzl realized, the trick is to convince both the body's defense mechanism and the new organ that the intruder is really "self," a recognized member of the host body...
Simple in theory, perhaps. But there is a long way to go before mutual cell assimilation, known as chimerism, between a donor organ and its recipient can be achieved with such relative ease. And much of the work being done is with mice, dogs and monkeys, which have been used successfully in assimilation studies by James Gozzo, dean of the Bouve College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Boston's Northeastern University, as well as by other researchers, including Judith Thomas, director of the Transplant Center at the University of Alabama. They have found that by first transplanting some donor...
...addition, the supply of placentas from the 4 million babies born each year in the U.S. is virtually unlimited. That should dramatically cut the cost of infusion from its current level, a prohibitive $25,000 a treatment, and save the lives of patients for whom a suitable donor might not otherwise be found...