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4B Weekend Edition-March 22-23, 2024 The Times, Gainesville, Georgia I gainesvilletimes.com HEALTH & SCIENCE Surgeons use gene-edited pig kidney for transplant Massachusetts General Hospital via AP Melissa Mattola-Kiatos,, RN, Nursing Practice Specialist, removes the pig kidney from its box to prepare for transplantation at Massachusetts General Hospital, Saturday, March 16, in Boston, Mass. BYMIKESTOBBE AP Medical Writer NEW YORK — Doctors in Boston have transplanted a pig kidney into a 62-year-old patient, the latest experiment in the quest to use animal organs in humans. Massachusetts General Hospital said Thursday that it's the first time a genetically modified pig kidney has been transplanted into a living person. Previously, pig kidneys have been temporarily transplanted into brain-dead donors. Also, two men received heart transplants from pigs, although both died within months. The patient, Richard “Rick” Slayman of Weymouth, Massachusetts, is recovering well from the surgery last Saturday and is expected to be discharged soon, doctors said Thursday. Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, the transplant surgeon, said the team believes the pig kidney will work for at least two years. If it fails, Slay- man could go back on dialysis, said kidney specialist Dr. Winfred Williams. He noted that unlike the pig heart recipients who were very sick, Slayman is “actually quite robust,” Slayman had a kidney transplant at the hospital in 2018, but had to go back on dialy sis last year when it showed signs of failure. When dialysis complications arose requiring frequent procedures, his doctors suggested a pig kidney transplant, he said in a statement released by the hospital. “I saw it not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive,” said Slayman, a systems manager for the Massa chusetts Department of Transportation. The transplant surgery took four hours, with 15 people in the operating room who cheered when the kidney started making urine, doctors said at a news conference. Dr. Parsia Vagefi, chief of surgical trans plantation at UT Southwestern Medical Center, called the announcement “a big step forward.” But echoing the Boston doctors, he said studies involving more patients at differ ent medical centers would be needed for it to become more commonly available. The experiment marks the latest devel opment in xenotransplantation, the term for efforts to try to heal human patients with cells, tissues, or organs from animals. For decades, it didn't work — the human immune system immediately destroyed foreign animal tissue. More recent attempts have involved pigs that have been modi fied so their organs are more humanlike — increasing hope that they might one day help fill a shortage of donated organs. More than 100,000 people are on the national waiting list for a transplant, most of them kidney patients, and thousands die every year before their turn comes. Pigs have long been used in human medi cine, including pig skin grafts and implan tation of pig heart valves. But transplanting entire organs is much more complex than using highly processed tissue. The kidney implanted in Slayman was provided by eGenesis of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The pig was genetically edited to remove harm ful pig genes and add certain human genes to improve its compatibility with humans. Slayman's case was challenging, doctors said. Even before his first transplant, he had trouble being on dialysis and needed doz ens of procedures to try to remove clots and restore blood flow. He became “increasingly despondent and depressed over his dialysis situation. At one point... he literally said ‘I just can't go on like this,'” said his kidney doctor, Williams. The Food and Drug Administration gave special permission for Slayman's transplant under “compassionate use” rules. Nathan Howard Associated Press Protesters dressed as Abraham Lincoln chant during a Planned Parenthood rally in support of abortion access outside the U.S. Supreme Court, April 15, 2023, in Washington. AP-NORC: Nearly 8 in 10 AAPI adults in the US think abortion should be legal BY GRAHAM LEE BREWER AND AMELIA TH0MS0N-DEVEAUX Associated Press WASHINGTON—With abortion rights poised to be one of the major issues in the 2024 election, a new poll shows that Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in the United States are highly supportive of legal abortion, even in situations where the pregnant person wants an abortion for any reason. The poll from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that nearly 8 in 10 Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders think abortion should be legal in all or most cases. They're also supportive of federal government action to preserve abortion rights: Three-quarters of AAPI adults say Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortions nationwide. By comparison, an AP-NORC poll conducted last June found that 64% of U.S. adults think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 6 in 10 U.S. adults overall say Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access. AAPI adults are more likely than Americans overall to identify as Democrats, which may partially explain why their levels of support for legal abortion are higher than among the general population. But even among Democrats, AAPI adults are more supportive of legal abortion later in pregnancy. AAPI Democrats are especially likely to support legal abortion without any limits — more than half of this group say abortion should be legal in all cases, compared to 40% of Democrats overall. AAPI Republicans are also more likely than Republicans overall to support a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide. More than half (57%) of AAPI Republicans think abortion should be legal in at least some cases, compared to 38% of Republicans in general. About half (51%) of AAPI Republicans also think Congress should pass a law guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide, while only 32% of Republicans overall want this to happen. Although AAPI voters are a fast-growing demographic with a particularly large presence in states like California, Texas and New York, their attitudes can often not be analyzed in other surveys because of small sample sizes, among other issues. This survey is part of an ongoing project focusing on AAPI Americans' views. High turnout in areas with large AAPI communities could help Democrats in competitive House districts, and a broader conversation about whether nonwhite voters are shifting to the right may lead to more courting of AAPI voters. The survey's findings suggest that abortion could be a strong issue for Democratic candidates who are looking to reach AAPI communities, and a challenge for Republicans. “It saddens me how politics got involved in this, and they really shouldn't have,” said Debra Nanez, a 72-year-old retired nurse in Tucson, Arizona, and an Independent voter. Nanez identifies as Asian, Native American and Hispanic. “It's a woman's body. How can you tell us what we can do with our bodies, what we can keep and what we cannot keep? It’s ridiculous.” While an AP-NORC poll conducted in October 2022 found that more than 4 in 10 Americans overall trust Democrats to do a better job of handling the issue of abortion, while only 2 in 10 have more trust in Republicans, the poll released Thursday shows that the trust gap between the parties is wider for AAPI adults. Fifty-five percent of AAPI adults trust Democrats on abortion policy, while only 12% trust Republicans. More than half of AAPI adults were born outside the U.S., according to the survey. For many of those immigrants and their first-generation American children, abortion isn’t just viewed as health care — it can also be seen as a right that was not afforded to them in their countries of origin, said Varan Nikore, executive director of AAPI Victory Alliance, a progressive political advocacy organization. “I think it has to do with some sort of home country attitudes that are sort of pervasive, but also the strong feeling we’ve had rights and we’ve had access to health care, and now we don’t want to lose something that we had. And it could be that we also came to this country to have better access to health care than we did before,” Nikore said. Nearly 6 in 10 AAPI adults don’t want Congress to pass a law preserving states' ability to set their own laws allowing or restricting abortion, and only 14% support the passage of a law banning access to abortions nationwide. Joie Meyer, 24, is a health care consultant in Florida, where abortions are prohibited after 15 weeks of pregnancy. She said that given that other nearby states like Alabama and Georgia have even more restrictive abortion laws, she would have to travel far to receive the procedure. “I'm 24 and maybe some people my age are having children, but if I were to get in that position to be pregnant, I don't think I would feel ready,” she said. “So, that would be something that I would have to think about.” Meyer, who was born in China but has lived in the U.S. since an infant, has made plans with a friend in California in case she does need an abortion. Flying across the country might be more time-consuming than driving to the nearest state that provides abortion, but she said she wants to know that she'll be with someone who can take care of her during the recovery. “Even if there's a closer state, would I want to do that alone and have to really navigate that physical and emotional pain alone? Not really,” Meyer said. The poll of 1,172 U.S. adults who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders was conducted from Feb. 5-14, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. Blood tests could identify people with AFib at risk of stroke BY LAURA WILLIAMSON American Heart Association News Booking at specific substances in the blood of people with atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular heartbeat, could help identify who's at risk for a stroke despite taking blood-thinning medication to prevent one, new research suggests. The researchers found biomarkers in the blood that reflect heart strain, inflammation and clotting raised stroke risk in people with AFib who are on blood thinners. The findings were presented Thursday at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology, Prevention, Fifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health conference in Chicago. AFib is a common type of arrhythmia in which the heart's two upper chambers quiver instead of fully contracting, interfering with their ability to pump blood to the heart's lower chambers. Blood left behind may pool and clot, raising the risk for a stroke. To prevent clots, people with AFib are often prescribed blood thinners, including anticoagulant and antiplatelet medications. But the treatment doesn't always work. Some people on blood thinners have what are called breakthrough strokes, said Dr. Samuel Short, the study's lead researcher and an internal medicine resident at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “We wanted to find out if, among people already taking blood thinners, blood tests could be used to predict who might have a stroke,” Short said. If so, it could help researchers pinpoint which people with AFib might benefit from additional treatment. Short and his team used blood tests to measure levels of nine biomarkers previously shown to be associated with risk of strokes caused by clots, known as ischemic strokes. Among 713 people with AFib who were taking blood-thinning medications, 9% (67 people) had their first ischemic stroke over 12 years of follow-up. Elevated levels of four biomarkers involved in heart strain, inflammation and blood clotting were associated with higher stroke risk. The findings are considered preliminary until full results are published in a peer-reviewed journal. Because blood clots might form more easily in people with higher levels of these biomarkers, Short said that being able to identify people at highest risk for a breakthrough stroke “is the first step in understanding what else might need to be done for that patient.” The next step is to look at how additional medications or procedures could help this group of people, he said. For some AFib patients on blood thinners, breakthrough strokes might happen because they aren't taking their medications as prescribed or the drugs are ineffective, said Dr. Uma Srivatsa, director of arrhythmia services at UC Davis Health in California. Higher biomarkers “would help us to be more diligent in monitoring these patients and to identify alternative treatment options,” said Srivatsa, who was not involved in the new study. “There are a lot of unknowns out there, but anything that helps us identify who is at risk is useful.” Kenny Eliason Unsplash These blood tests are done to measure the levels of nine biomarkers previously shown to be associated with risk of strokes caused by clots, known as isch emic strokes.
