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Woman Develops Peanut Allergy After Lung Transplant

Posted by samzenpus on from the no-extra-charge dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A woman in need of a lung transplant got her new lungs from someone with a peanut allergy who died of anaphylactic shock. Seven months after the surgery, the woman was at an organ transplant support group when she ate a peanut butter cookie and had a violent allergic reaction. So how had the woman's new lungs brought along a peanut allergy? A blog post dives into the medical details and explains that immune cells in the donated lungs couldn't have lived in the new body for long enough to cause the reaction... however, if they encountered an allergen (i.e. something peanuty) shortly after being transplanted, they could have trained the woman's native immune cells to respond."

8 of 146 comments (clear)

  1. Info Graphic? by autocracy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Where do you find these pictures? Did somebody get paid to go buy a container of peanuts and make that? Idle indeed...

    --
    SIG: HUP
  2. Idle? by emkyooess · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wouldn't call this an "idle" article. It's more of a real article that some of them lately.

    1. Re:Idle? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Agreed. At first I Thought "Well the only sources appear to be blogs" so I understood the idea of putting it under idle.

      BUT, it's on the NCBI Medical Publication website, here:
      http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18926410

      So I don't know why they didn't just link that and put this under... I dunno... Is there a Bio or medicine section? Science if nothing else.

    2. Re:Idle? by leonardluen · · Score: 4, Interesting

      it is strange occurrences like this that can have huge impacts on medical science. research into this could very well yield insight into how food allergies develop and possibly ways to treat or reverse them, or also new ways to keep a person's body from rejecting a newly transplanted organ. both of which are immune responses.

    3. Re:Idle? by EvanED · · Score: 4, Informative

      Remove the "idle." from the URL.

  3. Transplant drugs? by vlm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I believe if you get a lung transplant you get to take immunosuppresive drugs for life. So, she's on a heavy diet of drugs that deeply mess with her immune system, her immune system malfunctions, therefore it must be some mystical connection to a dead person.

    If you hear hooves, think horse not zebra.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
    1. Re:Transplant drugs? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It was my understanding that allergies are an over-reaction of the immune system. People without allergies have immune systems that have minimal responses. I would have thought that the transplant drugs would function the same as allergy medication in that they dampen the response.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  4. The solution is clear by EmagGeek · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sue the donor's estate