Why do organ recipients need to be a match but have to take anti rejection meds for the rest of their lives?
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Two big reasons. First off size a heart of a 12 year old won’t pump enough blood in a 30 year old. Next is rejection rates. Anti rejection meds only slow the process a matching organ also helps. Any organ transplant will eventually get rejected every step is taken to make it last. Needing an organ transplant is generally considered terminal even if you get the organ
Blood type match but not dna match. The body will always recognise that it is a foreign imposter. The organ is basically on life support from your body and, in turn, gives your body life support but never truly integrates with you entirely.
Your dna is a complete genetic set of instructions for your cellular makeup, and everyone’s is different. The transplanted part will always have its own set of genetic instructions and will never match your own. Your body has to be tricked into not attacking what is essentially not part of you. Forever…
“A match” is a matter of degree, and “rejection” is a matter of degree. No organ transplant will ever really be a perfect match, your body will always recognize foreign DNA. But some are a closer match than others. If it’s not a close match at all it will be instantly rejected, if it’s a close match, it’ll take many years before it’s fully rejected. The anti-rejection meds slow down the process of rejection, but they can’t cancel the basic biology of it all. The drugs won’t work at all on a bad match, and even with a good match, they won’t work forever. It’s considered lucky if you get 20 years out of a kidney transplant before it finally fails and you need another transplant. They usually fail within 10 years.
When someone gets an organ transplant, like a new kidney, their body will eventually see it as an invader and attack it. To avoid this, doctors look for a “match” which means finding an organ that is similar enough to the patient’s own organs, so the body is less likely to attack it. This is like finding a piece from some else’s puzzle that fits well, but not perfectly, in your puzzle—and your immune system can see the difference. Even when doctors find a good match, there’s still a chance the body might try to aggressively reject the new organ. So, patients have to take drugs like immunosuppressants and steroids for their whole lives, or until the immune system finally “catches on.” These drugs calm down the body’s defenses so it doesn’t fight the new organ so hard.
The human genome is *huge*, like blue whale’s heart huge.
10 years ago we knew 5 genes we needed to look at to detemine if a donor is a solid match for the recipient.
We currently know maybe 12 gene’s we need to look at to determine if an donor is a solid match for the recipient.
Even if all 12 of these known genes are a perfect match, the recipient has a better healthy life with those anti-rejection medications than they would without them.
So we keep giving them.
I’d like to piggyback on this question:
If eventually the donated organ is rejected that means they need to go onto the registry multiple times.
Which means those that it took a long time the first time and almost died b/c of that wait they have a very decent chance of not getting a new one (unless random “luck”) which is then now an even greater death sentence.
So, while we can be thankful they got off the registry finally, we also know that once they get the transport and regain strength or whatever they better make the most of it b/c they are already on borrowed time.
Does this apply in the case of bone marrow transplants? My b-i-l has had a very rare form of leukemia and the only treatment was a bone marrow transplant which he got from his (non twin) brother. It appears to have taken so some of his brother’s immune characteristics are now his. For example he was allergic to cats, but now isn’t, as his brother wasn’t. But I don’t know if he has to take anti rejection medication forever.
Just an added fun fact for everyone:
Immunosuppressants are poison. They are atrociously bad for you and taking them actively kills you.
They just kill you (most times) more slowly than rejecting an organ will.
Well, I guess organ transplant is like trying to make friends – the closer the match, the longer they’ll stick around!
It’s most likely because it’s a foreign body, jus Cus ur a match doesn’t make it’s not ur organ or dna so ur body recognises it as something that’s not supposed to be there and tries to evict it out of u. it jus means an organ that’s not a match cannot work, but a match has the potential to work. So u need the meds to keep ur body believing it’s sposed to be there to make it less likely to reject. I think I heard it can even still be rejected even with the meds. That’s my basic understanding of it anyway
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