Claudia relives through the first trachea graft without immunosuppressive

A young mother Colombian 30 years, Claudia Castillo, suffering from breathing problems, has received the first trachea transplant without the need to take immunosuppressive drugs and thus able to regain a normal life, according to a European team . This transplant on 12 June 2008 in Barcelona (Spain), based on the use of a donor trachea and adult stem cells from the young woman, is described online Wednesday in the British medical journal The Lancet by Barcelona teams, Padua and Milan (Italy) and the University of Bristol (Great Britain). After four years of wandering in consultation consultation, Claudia Castillo, a victim of tuberculosis diagnosed too late, has found a solution to its problems breathing. In March she became unable to care for her two children or perform simple household chores. The damage on its left main bronchus are such it would have the option of conventional removal of the left lung. To avoid this risky operation mutilating, Professor Paolo Macchiarini, a specialist in thoracic surgery in Barcelona (Hospital Clinico de Barcelona) and his colleagues decided, with the approval of the ethics committees concerned, this attempt to graft a new genre. Seven centimeters of trachea of a woman 51 years, died of a brain haemorrhage, are previously cleared of all its cells, in order not to provoke rejection once transplanted. It then takes on the patient Colombian stem cells from bone marrow: mesenchymal cells, capable of cartilage cells (chondrocytes). Other cells (of epithelial cells) are also taken on a healthy part of his trachea. Then, the donor trachea is a device placed in a "bioreactor" specially designed for this purpose, which made the turn with the cells of the patient. Thus the body is colonized by cells of the future recipient. What has prevented the lifelong treatment against the rejection of the transplanted organ. Ten days after the transplant, Claudia out of the hospital. Since then she goes and is now able to mount two floors or walk 500 meters without stopping and, perhaps most importantly, to care for her children, according to his doctors. She welcomed "to take advantage of new life" and was "pleased to be cured." This innovation in medicine could benefit other diseases of upper respiratory tract (congenital deformity, some tumors, etc.). Can not benefit from conventional surgery, according to the university Barcelona. However, for a better evaluation of these results, medical monitoring over longer periods are necessary, consider two Japanese, doctors Toshihiko Sato and Tatsuo Nakamura of Kyoto University in Lancet. The first transplant with the donor trachea was described in the same magazine in 1979.