https://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. U.S. health officials unveiled proposed changes to the nation's transplant system, hoping to help more patients get lifesaving organs, even when donations aren't perfect. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-federal-aims-donor-transplant-safety.html Sun, 01 Feb 2026 12:10:03 EST news688997367 The Red Cross is appealing to past donors and potential new donors as it says a "severe blood shortage" could result in delays for surgeries and other medical procedures. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-donations-sought-red-laments-severe.html Wed, 21 Jan 2026 19:00:02 EST news688202148 Offering non-monetary incentives such as free access to outpatient consultations to frequent blood donors is linked to an increase in donations without compromising blood safety, finds a study from China published by The BMJ. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-monetary-honor-based-incentives-linked.html Wed, 21 Jan 2026 18:30:03 EST news688206961 A sperm donor, who is an asymptomatic carrier of a genetic mutation increasing the risk of cancer, was used to conceive nearly 200 children worldwide, Denmark's public broadcaster revealed Wednesday. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-children-sperm-donor-cancer.html Wed, 10 Dec 2025 10:40:01 EST news684585456 A rare case of rabies linked to an organ transplant has resulted in two deaths, federal health officials announced. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-deaths-linked-rabies-infected-kidney.html Mon, 08 Dec 2025 13:50:01 EST news684421474 A new study shows that giving the chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation, a curative treatment for common types of blood cancer, can make the procedure safe and effective even when donors and recipients are unrelated and have extensive genetic mismatches. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-regimen-successful-stem-cell-transplant.html Mon, 08 Dec 2025 06:29:39 EST news684397741 For years, the search for a stem cell donor has felt like a quest for a rare key—one that fits a lock with eight intricate tumblers, each representing a genetic marker. For many patients with blood cancers, especially those from diverse backgrounds, the right key simply didn't exist. The door to a cure remained closed. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-patients-safely-stem-cell-transplants.html Sat, 06 Dec 2025 08:30:01 EST news684083616 Tiny immune cells called microglia protect the central nervous system (CNS) in a multitude of ways: They provide innate immunity, shape neurodevelopment, maintain homeostasis and modulate neurological disorders. That functionality can be lost, however, when microglia acquire mutations. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-microglia-paves-neurodegenerative-disease-therapies.html Thu, 04 Dec 2025 11:00:08 EST news683975041 Details of a 60-year-old male individual from Germany who achieved sustained HIV remission after a stem cell transplant, the seventh-known case reported to date, are published in Nature this week. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-12-cancer-patient-hiv-remission-stem.html Tue, 02 Dec 2025 09:07:44 EST news683888821 Type 1 diabetes (T1D) impacts nearly two million Americans, and by the time most people learn they have it, most of the body's insulin-producing cells are destroyed. Now, pinpointing a hidden group of immune "attack" cells in the pancreatic lymph nodes that appear earlier in the disease could offer the first real chance to detect—and even stop—T1D, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania detailed in Science Immunology. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-hidden-immune-cells-linked-early.html Fri, 21 Nov 2025 14:12:39 EST news682956751 HLA compatibility is considered the key criterion for selecting donors for allo-HSCT. DKMS study data presented at the DGHO Annual Meeting 2025 in Cologne indicate the biological age of donors has a greater influence on transplant success than previously assumed. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-young-donor-age-emerges-key.html Wed, 19 Nov 2025 21:40:01 EST news682788679 A population-based cohort study evaluated the long-term scrotal surgery rates after laparoscopic nephrectomy in male living kidney donors compared with nondonors. The findings revealed that the cumulative incidence for scrotal surgery among donors was one in eight after 20 years, compared with one in 143 for nondonors. Even with this risk, most males who donate a kidney won't develop this complication, so it shouldn't discourage donation. Encouraging kidney donation remains vital. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-males-scrotal-surgery-years-kidney.html Mon, 10 Nov 2025 17:00:01 EST news681987121 Research on human brain organoids (HBOs) is directly challenging how biobanks and biomedical institutes recruit volunteers. That is what a new study by Japanese researchers in Frontiers in Genetics concludes after finding that the Japanese public overwhelmingly rejects the common practice of broad consent when their donated cells could be used to create HBOs. This attitude jeopardizes recruitment and calls for an alternative form of consent that follows the project-specific consent model. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-japanese-strong-reluctance-donate-cells.html Tue, 04 Nov 2025 12:58:03 EST news681483481 Life-saving stem cell transplants have been limited by the need to perfectly match the blood types of donors and recipients, but a new discovery by the Minneapolis agency that orchestrates these procedures in the U.S. could eliminate that barrier. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-11-minneapolis-nonprofit-bone-marrow-donations.html Tue, 04 Nov 2025 09:30:01 EST news681468870 The World Health Organization's (WHO's) priorities are being skewed by its increasing reliance on donations from organizations such as the Gates Foundation (previously known as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), which must be spent on specific health challenges favored by the donors, suggests a study published in the journal BMJ Global Health. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-priorities-reliance-grants-donor.html Tue, 28 Oct 2025 18:30:03 EDT news680774221 Every day, 17 Americans die while waiting for an organ transplant. Opt-out organ donation policies, which enroll everyone into post-mortem donation programs by default unless people choose to opt out, have been touted as a way to increase the supply of desperately needed organs. But opt-out organ donation policies may reduce living organ donations, leaving systems no better supplied with lifesaving organs. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-opt-donation-policies.html Tue, 28 Oct 2025 10:34:03 EDT news680866441 Most successful fertility treatments for women aged 43 years and older rely on donor eggs, according to a study involving more than half a million patients in the UK. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-donor-eggs-ivf-successes-women.html Mon, 27 Oct 2025 07:42:05 EDT news680769721 New research from UCLA Health reveals that women continue to face barriers in accessing lung transplants compared to men, despite recent national policy changes aimed at making organ distribution more equitable. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-women-lung-transplants-policy.html Wed, 22 Oct 2025 10:23:03 EDT news680347382 Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and their collaborators have developed a new technology to track beneficial bacteria after fecal microbiota transplants (FMT). The approach provides a detailed view of how donor microbes take hold and persist in the patients' gut—not only which bacteria successfully colonized but how they change over time. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-scientists-track-donor-bacteria-fecal.html Wed, 22 Oct 2025 05:00:03 EDT news680249402 A recent study has revealed significant variations in the nutritional composition of donor human milk across different countries. These findings could transform how hospitals support critically ill preterm infants worldwide. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-variations-human-donor-critical-considerations.html Wed, 01 Oct 2025 15:45:04 EDT news678552301 Odds are that when you go to the supermarket, you check each product you pick up for its "best by" date, ensuring that you have the freshest, healthiest food to bring home for you and your family. An MUSC study published in the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition has found that those little best by dates for a particularly precious resource—donor human milk—have huge implications for the gastrointestinal health of very premature infants. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-donor-storage-key-preemie-gut.html Wed, 24 Sep 2025 13:02:04 EDT news677937721 In a mouse model of liver transplantation, UCLA researchers have identified proteins that act as "protective switches" guarding the liver against damage occurring when blood supply is restored during transplantation, a process known as ischemia-reperfusion injury. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-proteins-livers-suitable-transplantation.html Tue, 23 Sep 2025 12:00:01 EDT news677838121 Four out of five parents tell their donor-conceived children about their biological origins, according to new research out of Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-donor-children-told-biological-reveals.html Fri, 19 Sep 2025 07:07:52 EDT news677484466 More women than ever are carrying babies conceived with someone else's egg—but few are told that this might carry greater health risks. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-donor-egg-births.html Wed, 10 Sep 2025 11:50:04 EDT news676723802 Peking University scientists have developed a cancer therapy that could make life-saving treatment accessible to any patient, anywhere. A team led by Professor Wei Wensheng from Peking University, collaborating with the PLA General Hospital and biotech company EdiGene Inc., has developed a novel cancer therapy that could make advanced treatment accessible to many more patients. Their study is published in the journal Cell. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-gene-immune-cells-universal-shelf.html Mon, 08 Sep 2025 11:02:03 EDT news676548121 There is a common misconception that legionella is only found in air conditioners and water towers, however, Griffith University research has found people are likely exposed to the bacteria through other sources, including through soil. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-de-mystifying-common-misconception-prevalence.html Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:48:03 EDT news676266481 A new study from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus has found that caffeine, the world's most consumed psychoactive substances, may impair the quality of donated blood and reduce the effectiveness of transfusions—especially in recipients whose red blood cell (RBC) metabolism is influenced by a common genetic variant. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-caffeine-undermine-blood-transfusion-effectiveness.html Thu, 04 Sep 2025 13:28:05 EDT news676211282 Australia's fertility sector has been rocked by yet more reports of serious errors, this time involving sperm donors from overseas. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-dont-ivf-sperm-donors-overseas.html Wed, 03 Sep 2025 10:47:05 EDT news676115222 August is National Minority Donor Awareness Month. It's a time of celebrating organ donation and educating people about transplantation by encouraging donor registration and promoting healthy living. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-transplant-surgeon-diverse-donors.html Wed, 20 Aug 2025 06:40:01 EDT news674890384 Cell replacement therapy offers new hope for millions of people affected by retinal degenerations (RDs)—a group of blinding conditions caused by the loss of light-sensing photoreceptor cells in the retina. Among the most promising approaches is the transplantation of stem cell-derived partially differentiated photoreceptor cells, known as precursor cells, to replace those lost to disease. But a persistent hurdle remains: Many of the transplanted cells do not survive long enough to integrate or restore vision. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-08-key-survival-transplanted-retinal-cells.html Tue, 05 Aug 2025 07:32:24 EDT news673597938