A 56-YEAR-OLD Japanese woman has donated half of her pancreas to treat her daughter's diabetes. It is the first time a living donor has donated part of this organ.
After removing the pancreatic tissue at Kyoto University Hospital in Japan on 19 January, James Shapiro of the University of Alberta in Canada and his colleagues extracted the islet cells and transplanted them into the woman's 27-year-old daughter.
The islet cells began producing insulin minutes after the transplant, says Shapiro, who in 2000 developed the so-called "Edmonton protocol. This is a procedure for isolating and transplanting islet cells taken from cadavers or people pronounced brain dead, and a cocktail of drugs to prevent rejection. It appears to cure diabetes - although patients have to take the anti-rejection drugs for life - but so far only 500 people have been treated worldwide because of a severe shortage of islet cells from the ...
To continue reading this article, subscribe to receive access to all of newscientist.com, including 20 years of archive content.