First transplantation of a pork in humans

In Germany alone, more than 8,000 people are waiting for a donor organ. An organ transplant would save you life. Medicine tries to find procedures that can also be used to transplant animal organs so that people can live with it.

In China for the first time, doctors used a pork on a person. A research team from the Chinese city reports on this intervention in the specialist journal “Nature”. Accordingly, the transplant took place in May 2024. The patient was a 39 -year -old brain -dead man. The operation itself was successful, but the transplant was not successful.

First, the pork was changed genetically to reduce the risk of rejection. In fact, the patient’s body initially accepted the foreign organ after the operation. But quite soon complications arose. After 24 hours, edema formed, i.e. Liquid accumulation in the lungs. From the third day, rejection symptoms be used.

The patient’s family decided on the ninth day to cancel the experiment. Nevertheless, it can be said that the lungs worked in the human body for nine days. The biotechnologist Dr. Konrad Fischer from the Technical University of Munich sees it “an important step in transplant medicine”.

From so -called Xeno transplantation In the long term, researchers hope for a solution to the lack of organ donors. In Germany, 8575 people were waiting for a donor organ at the end of 2024. In the past year, however, only 953 people donated organs.

So far, two transplants from pig people to living people have become known worldwide, both at the university clinic in Baltimore. The patients died a few weeks after the operation. In addition, some patients got pigs with different success. In March, the transplantation of a pig liver was also achieved for the first time. The attempt at a brain -dead patient was canceled after ten days. Such interventions have not yet been approved in Germany.