Researchers at the University at Buffalo have conducted an advanced, definitive analysis of all released chemicals that were released by the lungs of an immunically-transplant recipient who died of recurrent encephalomyelitis (RHE), per 1 meter of the blood. This critical step in the process was needed for identification of toxic chemicals released by the recipients.
Myelofibrosis is a common, progressive autoimmune disease of the central nervous system consisting of multiple organ failure and loss of sensory and muscle control. RHE can result in severe impairment of the nervous system, health and quality of life. RHE can affect children weighing between 2 and 9 years old, and 90 percent of families experience treatment rejection.
“In this study, we compared the lungs of deceased RHE patients with those of 27 donors who did not survive RHE, the highest design of that study,” said Roy Schwab, a researcher in the UB Prostate Cancer Center and director of UB’s Prostate Cancer Program,’s Genomics Unit. “This increase our confidence that the investigators’ findings are real and not biased.”
The researchers found that RHE patients who died of RHE had released toxic chemicals — 13 of which were already released in the lungs of their patients. The percentage of the lungs of patients who died that tested positive for TMAO (tetrahydrocannabinol) was 7.6 percent. “This was a pretty small difference,” said Schwab, whose lab carried out the study. “We only studied donors, not recipients, so the correlation is not due to a greater rate of release from the donor lungs. The difference in release was only observed in those patients who died from RHE.”
