News by Subject Medicine & Health

The new system did not minimize pre-transplant dialysis exposure for patients who were not waitlisted preemptively.

Children are at a considerable disadvantage when competing with adults for livers from deceased organ donors in the US allocation system for liver transplants.

University of Colorado Boulder researchers have discovered a key mechanism by which skin begins to develop in embryos.

A new study in the INFORMS journal Management Science shows how to improve the success rate of an innovative kidney matching process called kidney exchange. The enhancement centers on a new concept called 'failure-aware' matching that takes pre-transplant compatibility failures into account probabilistically. Depending somewhat on the exact setting, the method can roughly double the number of transplants.

Titanium-based materials are widely used in medical implant technology, and coating the surface of titanium materials with biologically active molecules has recently shown promise to improve how cells adhere to implants. The mechanisms behind how peptides stick to titanium, however, are not fully understood. Researchers have now found how calcium ions present at the interface between titanium oxide and tissues affect how well peptides bind to the metal. The team reports their findings in Biointerphases.

In a paper published in Xenotransplantation, Mark Prichard, Ph.D., and colleagues at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have described the development and testing of 30 quantitative assays for pig infectious agents. These assays had sensitivities similar to clinical lab assays for viral loads in human patients. After validation, the UAB team also used the assays on nine sows and 22 piglets delivered from the sows through caesarian section.