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Scientists have grown blood vessels for kidney patients from their own cells, making it easier and safer for them to use dialysis machines, a new study says.
Todd McAllister of Cytograft Tissue Engineering in California and colleagues implanted lab-grown blood vessels into 10 patients with advanced kidney disease in Argentina and Poland from 2004 to 2007.
Early results for two of these patients were announced in 2005. In 2007, the scientists published preliminary findings for another 4 patients in the New England Journal of Medicine. In this most recent study, published in the medical journal Lancet, scientists reported on the new blood vessels in those same patients and 4 others.
In the study, doctors took a small snippet of skin from patients. Cells from those samples were grown in a lab, to help them produce proteins like elastin and collagen. From those, scientists made sheets of tissue that were rolled into blood vessels 6 to 8 inches long.
The vessels were finished after 6 to 9 months. All of the vessels were implanted into patients' upper arms, to connect them to dialysis machines.
The vessels failed in three of the patients, which experts said was not surprising in patients so seriously ill. One other patient withdrew from the study and another died of unrelated causes.
In the five remaining patients, the vessels worked for at least 6 to 20 months after they were implanted. Afterwards, those patients needed fewer interventions to maintain the vessels than regular dialysis patients.
McAllister said he and colleagues plan to test similar devices in patients with heart and leg problems. "It's basically a piece of plumbing to bypass blockages," he said.
"It's difficult to predict what will happen next, but they are on the right track," said Vladimir Mironov of the Medical University of South Carolina, who co-wrote an accompanying commentary in the Lancet that praised the study as "a revolutionary milestone." ■AP
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