Kidney, liver, heart: When patients receive a transplanted organ, it often saves lives. So that the organ is not rejected by the body’s own immune system, so-called immunosuppressants shut down the immune system. The dosage is tricky, for example in the case of a kidney transplant: If the patient gets too much of the drug, he is susceptible to infections – if he gets too little, the organ is rejected. So far, the dosage was determined exclusively by the drug level and body weight.
In the future, a virus could help to determine the individually ideal amount of immunosuppressive agents. Torque teno virus (TTV) occurs in the blood of healthy and sick people. It does not cause disease but acts as an indicator of the strength or weakness of an immune system. This is what scientists from the Transplantation Center at the Ordensklinikum Linz are researching together with 18 other partners in seven European countries.
Research in the Ordensklinikum
Previous findings from the “TTV GUIDE TX” project on the optimal dosage of immunosuppressants after kidney transplants are promising. “The first results are constant and therefore promising. We see that the dosage of the immunosuppressive agents according to the TTV indicators works in practice,” says Daniel Cejka, head of the Department of Nephrology and Transplantation Medicine at the Linz Elisabethinen Ordensklinikum.
The primary also gives hope for other areas of application for the recently discovered virus: “The result of this research will not only be important for kidney transplants in the future. The results are also great for other organ transplants, such as heart, lung or liver transplants, as well as bone marrow transplants benefit,” says the doctor. In addition to transplantation medicine, patients with autoimmune, infectious and oncological diseases could also benefit from the research results in the future.
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