UCSF

UCSF, California Pacific Medical Center perform rare kidney swaps

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Doctors at UCSF and California Pacific Medical Center were finishing the final of 18 surgeries Friday afternoon in a rare nine-way, two-day kidney transplant swap at the two San Francisco hospitals.

Transplant surgeons at both hospitals successfully completed 10 surgeries involving five donors and five recipients on Thursday and were on track Friday to finish the final eight surgeries for four donor-recipient pairs in what’s considered to be the longest kidney transplant chain performed in one city in such a short period of time.

Adding to the logistical hurdles of so many surgeries, kidneys had to be ferried back and forth between the two hospitals. On Friday, two kidneys were sent from California Pacific to UCSF via a special organ transport service and two kidneys were sent from UCSF to California Pacific for a total of four, 3-mile trips. Two trips were made Thursday.

“Everything went as planned and our team is just getting to transport the very last one,” said Noel Sanchez, spokesman for Donor Network West, late Friday afternoon. The Oakland company specializes in packaging and transporting organs.

More than 101,000 people in the United States are waiting for a kidney because of a variety of health conditions that lead to renal failure.

While some may have friends or family members willing to donate, they may not be a match. So many have to wait an average of four to five years for a kidney from a deceased person.

But a computer software program, first developed by a former kidney transplant patient at California Pacific, has made domino-like kidney transplant chains possible by connecting willing donors with compatible recipients, even if their kidney does not match their intended recipient. The donor’s kidney will be paired with a matching recipient and, in exchange, the donor’s loved one will receive a kidney from a compatible donor in the same chain.

The software matches are based on basic factors like age and blood type, but also involve detailed information such as whether the donor’s blood contains certain proteins that might trigger a recipient to reject their organ.

The UCSF-California Pacific kidney swap was started by an altruistic donor, 56-year-old Reid Moran-Haywood, who had originally wanted to donate a kidney to a friend last fall. When the Napa man did not prove to be a match for his friend, he decided he wanted to help someone else. Moran-Haywood’s surgery was the first to be done Thursday morning.

UCSF officials said late Friday afternoon that surgeries were almost completed and that everything had gone smoothly. California Pacific officials also said the procedures were going well at their hospital.

California Pacific spokesman Dean Fryer said he spoke with several of the patients waiting to be operated on Friday morning and they were in high spirits. “They were all excited and anticipating and getting ready for surgery,” he said.

Drinking Soda Each Day Has Accelerating Effect On Cellular Aging, May Cut 4.6 Years Off Life

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Drinking one soda each day shortens your lifespan. 

While consuming sugary soft drinks is often associated with a higher risk of obesity, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, cardiovascular death, and certain types of cancer, new research suggests that it can also shorten our lifespan. A recent studyconducted at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has revealed that drinking soda frequently can shorten the length of telomeres within white blood cells, which can be used as a predictor for human lifespan.

“Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened sodas might influence disease development, not only by straining the body’s metabolic control of sugars, but also through accelerated cellular aging of tissues,” Dr. Elissa Epel, professor of psychiatry at UCSF and senior author of the study, said in a statement.

Epel and her colleagues gathered data using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys from 1999 to 2002. The study’s sample included 5,309 U.S. adults between the ages of 20 and 65 with no history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease. Participants were asked to recall their diet in the past 24 hours, and researchers used DNA samples to measure telomere length. On average, participants consumed 12 ounces of soda, while around 21 percent reported drinking at least 20 ounces of soda each day.

UCSF researchers determined that drinking 20 ounces of soda a day was linked to 4.6 years of additional biological aging. This conclusion was made by assessing the way telomere length shortens with chronological age. The effect drinking soda had on telomere shortening was comparable to smoking or, in the opposite, anti-aging direction, regular exercise. Previous studies have also associated telomere shortening with chronic diseases of aging, such as heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer.

“This is the first demonstration that soda is associated with telomere shortness,” Epel added. “This finding held regardless of age, race, income, and education level. Telomere shortening starts long before disease onset.  Further, although we only studied adults here, it is possible that soda consumption is associated with telomere shortening in children, as well.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, sugary drinking consumption among both children and adults has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, coinciding with America’s obesity epidemic. Around half of the U.S. population over the age of 2 reports drinking a sugary drink on any given day. UCSF researchers are currently working on a second study to test the effect of soda consumption on aspects of cellular aging in real time.

“It is critical to understand both dietary factors that may shorten telomeres, as well as dietary factors that may lengthen telomeres,” said Cindy Leung, postdoctoral fellows from the UCSF Center for Health and Community. “Here it appeared that the only beverage consumption that had a measurable negative association with telomere length was consumption of sugared soda.”

Source: Laraia B, Leung C, Epel E, et al. Soda and Cell Aging: Associations Between Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption and Leukocyte Telomere Length in Healthy Adults From the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys. American Journal of Public Health. 2014.

Urge Feds to Cut Funding for Cruel Experiments at UCSF.

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monkey

The University of California-San Francisco (UCSF)—which receives half a billion dollars a year in taxpayer funds for research—has a long history of abusing mice, monkeys, and other animals imprisoned in its laboratories and violating federal animal welfare laws and guidelines. New documents obtained by PETA reveal that these miserable conditions continue to plague the more than 1 million animals in UCSF’s laboratories.

Government reports and internal UCSF records document more than 100 violations of federal animal welfare laws and guidelines in just the past few years. Among the dozens of violations:

·         Experimenters didn’t provide pain relief to mice and rats who had their skulls, backs, and abdomens cut into.

·         Experimenters placed live newborn mice inside a freezer meant for dead animals.

·         Experimenters cut out both of a rabbit’s eyes in an unapproved surgery.

·         Experimenters cut the toes off of mice without pain relief, and mice died from dehydration because staff failed to notice that they didn’t have any water.  

A rhesus monkey named Peanut was subjected to multiple invasive brain surgeries and was deliberately deprived of food so that he would perform tasks while locked in a restraint chair. Peanut lost 25 percent of his body weight, but it was only after he was killed that experimenters realized that Peanut’s jaw didn’t open properly and that he probably hadn’t been able to chew food.

A monkey named Squinty suffered with chronic dermatitis for more than a year. Red rashes and open lesions covered his body, and one medical report noted that the condition was so severe that there was “[n]o normal skin to provide a comparison.”

Another monkey named Petra was subjected to invasive brain experiments and suffered chronic and painful complications, including a terrible bacterial infection in the wound where her head had been cut open. Experimenters continued to torment Petra for nearly two years despite her deteriorating health. She rapidly began to lose weight, circled endlessly in her cage, and ripped out her own hair.

UCSF’s history of violating federal animal welfare laws and guidelines dates back more than 15 years and includes a $92,500 fine that the university was forced to pay in 2005 for dozens of violations of the Animal Welfare Act.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) policies require facilities receiving taxpayer money to abide by animal welfare laws and guidelines as a condition of their receiving grants, but last year, UCSF received more than $500 million in taxpayer money—half of which was likely spent on experiments involving animals—even though it continues to regularly violate these provisions.

Please join PETA and call on NIH to cut taxpayer funding for experiments on animals at UCSF.

Source:PETA

URL: http://www.peta.org/index_landing.asp