Skin-Kidney Disease Baffles Doctors

Washington Post (via Drudge) ^ | Thursday, January 17, 2002; 2:21 PM | Erin McClam, Associated Press Writer

[Isaiah_61]

If organ recipients are given massive doses of powerful immunosuppressants, then don't the people become little more than walking Petri dishes for whatever might be contained within the implanted organ? 1) Accidently, it seems that such a person could pass along the contamination to a really large number of people. 2) If this black market thing is really wide spread, it seems to me that it's just barely possible that someone really evil minded could arrange for badly contaminated organs to be implanted on purpose, if the contamination proved to be something which would grow in the "host" and get passed on...

It is a delicate balancing act. There are things you avoid doing because of the risk of infection. You still have some of the antibodies that keep you from catching everything, as long as the immunosuppresants aren't cranked up to heavy. The normal poplulation not on immunosuppresants has all of the normal immunity they would normally have.

I don't think the black market is that pervasive. Then the person receiving the transplant would have to become a donor which is not a high probability.

[Go Gordon]

"Their skin feels like wood," said Dr. Michelle Goveia, a California-based CDC epidemiologist. "You knock on it, and it sounds like you're knocking on wood.

Doctors have named the disease Goreitis

[SC DOC]

I am not sure of the mechanism of GVHD in solid tumor transplants, but in bone marrow transplants it is due to T-lymphocytes in the donor marrow attacking the host that it has been transplanted into because of a recognition of the difference in tissue antigens. In a solid tumor transplant, I would presume that the transplanted organ stimulates an immune reaction that causes the body to react against itself rather than rejecting the transplanted organ. A scleroderma like syndrome is sometimes seen. The currently described scleromyxedema like picture must be uniquely different and caused by some undescribed mechanism.