Study May Help Predict Transplant Success

UPMC doctors may have made a major breakthrough in the field of organ transplantation. Researchers say they may have found the first successful method for predicting organ viability. They say the presence of a certain protein in organs could dictate whether the transplants will be successful. Researchers evaluated data from 30 brain-dead organ donors. They then followed up on the 91 donated organs to gauge their outcomes. What they found was that organs that contained higher concentrations of the protein interleukin-6 were more likely to fail. Lead author Dr. John Kellum says this study may be a huge step forward for organ donation and transplantation, but the findings need to be confirmed in a larger study.