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UNIQUE CASE: Demi-Lee Brennan with Dr Stephen Alexander (left) and Dr Stuart Dorney at Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney. Demi-Lee is believed to be the first person in the world to completely accept a donated organ to the extent that her immune system entirely changed. -- PHOTO: AAP
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SYDNEY - TRANSPLANT patients and immune disease sufferers have received new hope from a 15-year-old girl who has defied medical science by spontaneously switching blood types and taking on her donor's immune system.
Australian teenager Demi-Lee Brennan is being hailed as a 'one-in-six-billion miracle' and is believed to be the first person in the world to completely accept a donated organ to the extent that her immune system entirely changed.
An article on the case was published in yesterday's edition of a leading US medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine.
Demi-Lee, now 15, was seriously ill with liver failure and had a transplant at the age of nine in 2001.
Nine months later, doctors at Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney said they were shocked to discover her blood type had changed from O-negative, the same as her parents, to O-positive, the blood type of her deceased male donor.
'It is extremely unusual. In fact, we don't know of any other instance in which this happened,' said Dr Michael Stormon, her doctor.
On closer inspection, doctors found that stem cells from the donor liver had penetrated her bone marrow, effectively resulting in a naturally occurring bone marrow transplant.
Dr Stormon said Demi-Lee was able to come off the anti-rejection drugs that most transplant patients need to take for the rest of their lives to stop an internal fight between their new organ and their immune system.
The drugs, known as immunosuppressants, can have toxic effects on organs and cause severe infections, reported ABC News.
The teenager's mother, Ms Kerrie Mills, described her recovery as 'miraculous', and the patient herself told a news conference that doctors had given her life back to her.
'I just can't thank them enough. It's like my second chance at life,' said the now healthy 15-year-old.
Dr Stormon said that what happened was 'still highly difficult to explain at this stage'.
The Melbourne Herald Sun quoted him as saying: 'We're not sure (of) the reasons behind why this has happened, but it may be that a complex range of circumstances have aligned to bring it about.'
He said it appeared that the teenager might have been fortunate because a sequence of 'serendipitous events', including a post-transplantation infection, might have given the stem cells from her donor's liver the chance to proliferate in the bone marrow, where blood cells develop.
'To try to replicate that is easier said than done,' he said.
But he added that the case could still potentially be of crucial importance.
'The holy grail of transplant medicine is immuno-tolerance. She exemplifies that this can occur.'
A team of scientists has started research into the case, in the hope that their findings will improve treatments and outcomes for other transplant patients.
Successful research would have potential benefits for transplant patients as well as sufferers of immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and type-1 diabetes, said Dr Stormon.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
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