Imagine learning you have an illness. It's the same illness that killed your mother. You watched her fade, the last years of her life dreadful to watch, unimaginably tough to endure. The same fate awaits you. Until... it doesn't. Now there's a therapy that just might save you.
That's the story of San Francisco Bay Area resident Cynthia Alcaraz-Jew, featured in the fall issue of Stanford Medicine Magazine. Now in her late 40s, Alcaraz-Jew, like her mother, suffers from a rare genetic condition called Alport Syndrome. The ailment leads to kidney, ear and eye problems.
Alcaraz-Jew didn't immediately luck out. Her kidneys failed first and her younger brother, Xavier, a perfect immunologic match, offered to donate his kidney. Great news, of course, but a transplant usually means years of immunosuppressive drugs, which leave bones brittle and can lead to infections, heart disease, or even, ironically kidney failure.
Thanks to her perfectly matched kidney, Alcaraz-Jew was able to enroll in a trial led by Stanford immunologist Samuel Strober, MD, that aims to wean transplant patients off immunosuppressive drugs. From the article:
Of the 24 kidney transplant patients with perfectly matched donors who enrolled in the trial beginning in 2000, 16, including Alcaraz-Jew, are living drug free, and three others are working to get off the medications, Strober says. The team is planning to publish a paper summarizing the research results in the near future.
And the photo? That's Alcaraz-Jew and her husband swimming with whale sharks in Mexico earlier this year.
Previously: Stanford Medicine magazine traverses the immune system, Kidney-transplant recipients party without drugs — immune-suppressing anti-rejection drugs, that is, Might kidney-transplant recipients be able to toss their pills? and Marked improvement in transplant success on the way, says Stanford immunologist
Photo courtesy of Cynthia Alcaraz-Jew
