A woman from Alabama who lives with a pork kidney during a 130 -day record eliminated him after her body began to reject him.
Towana Looney de Gadsden, Alabama, returned home after her surgery on April 4 at Nyu Langone Health.
Looney thanked his doctors for “the opportunity to be part of this incredible research.”
Towana Looney, a pork kidney transplantation recipient, receives a morning check with Dr. Jeffrey Stern in Nyu Langone Health in New York, Friday, January 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
Woman who received experimental pork kidney transplantation after the new organ failed
Although doctors now return it to dialysis, experience gave doctors very necessary information about the trip to a solution.
“Although the result is not what someone wanted, I know that a lot of my 130 days was learned with a pork kidney, and that this can help and inspire many others on their trip to overcome kidney disease,” Looney told The Associated Press.
Looney has been receiving dialysis since 2016 and was abnormally prepared to reject a human kidney, according to an AP report.
Since the procedure, he has called herself “superwoman” and has been able to live longer than anyone with a pig organ edited by the gene. Looney had the organ of his transplant from November 25 until the beginning of April.
Towana Looney’s Pork Kidney Transplant Receptor meets 2 Dr. Jayme Locke transplant surgeons on December 10, 2024 at Nyu Langone Health in New York. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
Massachusetts man dies 2 months after becoming a first person to receive a successful pork kidney transplant
Dr. Robert Montgomery, Looney’s surgeon, said rejection is being investigated.
He and his doctors decided that it would be less risky to eliminate the kidney from the pig than try to keep it.
“We were sure,” Montgomery told AP. “It is not worse than before (the xenotransplant) and I would tell you that it is better because it had this 4½ months of dialysis.”
Looney suffered a previous infection and his drugs against immune rejection were slightly reduced, Montgomery said. At the same time, his immune system was reactivating after the transplant. These factors may have combined to damage the new kidney, he said.
Lisa Pisano looks at her dog’s photos after her surgeries in Nyu Langone Health in New York on Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
In May of last year, Lisa Pisano, the second person to receive a kidney from a pig edited by the gene, also had to remove the kidney to resume dialysis.
Click here to get the Fox News application
More than 100,000 people are on the US transplants waiting list. Uu., Most who need a kidney and thousands die waiting. With the hope of filling the shortage of donated organs, several biotechnology companies are genetically modifying pigs, so their organs are more human, less likely to be destroyed by people’s immune systems.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
