Kidney transplants: an innovative method to avoid rejections

QMI agency

Tuesday, 27 march 2018 15:49

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Tuesday, 27 march 2018 15:49

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A clinical study has allowed us to develop a promising approach to help young people who have undergone a kidney transplant to take their medicines in order to avoid rejections.

Young patients who received a new kidney are 15 to 20 % higher risk of discharges as adults.

“Forget to take her anti-rejection medication, even if it only happens a few times, can result in failure of the transplant,” said Dr. Bethany Foster, a nephrologist pediatric McGill university health Centre (MUHC).

Dr. Foster has developed, with specialists in eight hospital centres in Canada and the United States, the platform, TAKE-IT, a pill box, electronic combined with the “coaching” personnel related to adherence to treatment.

The pill box electronic, connected to a digital calendar, send an alert when one of the compartments is open.

For the clinical study, a pill box big enough, for the elderly, has been used, but the researchers hope a pill smaller size, better suited to the younger clientele, is developed.

“Every time that the young person opens a compartment, it records the time and date,” explained Dr. Foster, in an interview with TVA News.

“If it does not open, it is known that the young patient has not taken his medication,” added the nephrologist pediatric.

During the clinical study, launched in 2011, electronic surveillance has been put in place to warn the young grafted, when they had not taken their medication. Sms and e-mails were then sent to alert the patients.

For their clinical study, the researchers followed 169 young transplant recipients from 11 to 24 years old for 1 year, a part of the group, the control group, not receiving alert when the oblivion of medication, and not receiving “coaching” custom.

“Given the shortage of available organs for transplantation purposes, each failure represents a loss, not only for the patient, but also for all the people involved in the transplant of organs”, added the nephrologist pediatric MUHC.

In the first group of the clinical study, the rate of adherence to medication treatment anti-rejection was 66 % higher than the rate among comparison group members, one can read in a press release of the MUHC.

“This clinical study on compliance with a daily drug treatment that we have come to realize is the most important to have been conducted to date, with renal transplant. The identification of an approach that is effective in the promotion of adherence to treatment among patients with chronic conditions is an important breakthrough,” said Dr. Foster in the press release.