Transplant teen who changed blood type is 'a girl in six billion'
Last updated at 15:37pm on 24.01.08


A teenage transplant patient from Australia has astounded scientists from around the world by becoming the first person ever to switch blood type and completely accept a transplanted organ.

Demi-Lee Brennan, 15, spontaneously switched from blood type O-negative to O-positive after taking on her liver donor's immune system.

Experts down under say the teenager is the living "holy grail of transplants" are have put together a team to research her against-the-odds transformation. They hope their findings will help other transplant patients and even multiple sclerosis and type-1 diabetes sufferers.

Demi-Lee suffered liver failure and had a liver transplant at the age of nine in 2001.

Several months on from the transplant, her doctors at Westmead Children's Hospital in Sydney were shocked to discover her blood type had changed to match the blood type of her deceased male donor.

On closer inspection, specialists found that stem cells from the donor liver had penetrated her bone marrow, effectively resulting in a naturally occurring bone marrow transplant. It makes Demi-Lee the first person ever recorded whose body has entirely accepted a transplanted organ.

Remarkably, Demi-Lee no longer needs anti-rejection drugs to keep her alive. The drugs, known as immunosuppresants, can have toxic effects on organs and cause severe infections.

Other organ transplant patients have been taken off anti-rejection drugs, but nearly only with the aid of a bone-marrow transplant.

Head of haematology, Dr Julie Curtin, described the phenomenon as a natural bone-marrow transplant: "The holy grail of transplants was achieved.

"That's what we were trying to achieve for everybody, but Demi-Lee's body has done that itself."

Demi-Lee's doctor, Michael Stormon, said: "We were stunned, absolutely stunned, and also very puzzled," said Dr Stormon, who reported the case in Australia's New England Journal of Medicine.