Hormone therapy for organ transplantation

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital have found that patients undergoing organ transplants can be primed by using hormones which could recognize the new organ as self and does not produce an immune response against it causing no immune rejection of the organ. Scientists feel that this priming would be better than immunosuppressive drugs as immune suppressive drugs leads to loss of immunity which may cause bacterial infection or other immunosuppressive diseases.

The research team has conducted their experiment in young pig models, using Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) which plays a main role in regulation of reproductive system and is responsible for stimulating the anterior pituitary gland to synthesize and secrete the gonadotropin FSH and LH. The research team will be starting this hormone therapy to kidney transplanted pig to make it recognize the new organ as ‘self’ and when there is no more immune rejection the hormone therapy would be stopped. Though, the work is still on its infant state the work has to be tried on human trials before the effectiveness and tolerance of the hormone therapy could be evaluated.