The shortage of available donor hearts limits the number of cardiac transplantations worldwide and in Israel as well. This organ shortage results in 15%-20% annual mortality of heart transplant candidates. For the sub-group of hospitalized decompensated heart failure patients depending on continuous inotropic support (Status I), the annual mortality is over 50%. Suboptimal utilization of donor hearts has been one of the reasons for the organ shortage. In 2004, only 42% of the potential donor hearts in Israel were eventually transplanted. The objective of this report is to define guidelines regarding the suitability of potential cardiac donors allowing more liberal criteria for accepting borderline donor hearts. Implementing the new guidelines will permit the utilization of organs that otherwise would have been discarded.
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J Extracell Biol
January 2025
Human milk extracellular vesicles (EVs) are crucial mother-to-baby messengers that transfer biological signals. These EVs are reported to survive digestion and transport across the intestine. The mechanisms of interaction between human milk EVs and the intestinal mucosa, including epithelial uptake remain unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Center for Engineering in Medicine and Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Static cold storage of donor livers at 4 °C incompletely arrests metabolism, ultimately leading to decreases in ATP levels, oxidative stress, cell death, and organ failure. Hydrogen Sulfide (HS) is an endogenously produced gas, previously demonstrated to reduce oxidative stress, reduce ATP depletion, and protect from ischemia and reperfusion injury. HS is difficult to administer due to its rapid release curve, resulting in cellular death at high concentrations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFXenotransplantation
January 2025
Division of Cardiac Surgery, Department of Surgery, Children's Hospital of Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Introduction: There is no standard protocol for management of organ preservation for orthotopic, life-sustaining cardiac xenotransplantation, particularly for hearts from pediatric sized donors. Standard techniques and solutions successful in human allotransplantation are not viable. We theorized that a solution commonly used in reparative cardiac surgery in human children would suffice by exploiting the advantages inherent to xenotransplantation, namely the ability to reduce organ ischemic times by co-locating the donor and recipient.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimers Dement
December 2024
Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA.
Background: Enlarged perivascular spaces (ePVS) on MRI can signal impaired cerebral fluid clearance and predict dementia risk. Risk factors and biological correlates of ePVS are uncertain partially due to the lack of pathological correlation studies. Repetitive head impacts (RHI) from contact sports might represent one risk factor for ePVS, given their association with vascular pathologies and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease characterized by perivascular p-tau aggregates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimers Dement
December 2024
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA.
Background: The unique lesion of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is the perivascular deposition of hyperphosphorylated tau at the depth of the cortical sulci. The distribution and molecular composition of p-tau is distinct from Alzheimer's disease (AD), but differential diagnostic challenges remain. Understanding disease differences in regional density of p-tau will inform differential diagnosis and interpretation of in vivo biomarkers.
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