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POPSAustralian girl's 'miracle' immune switch
Her blood type changed from O negative to O positive - the blood group of the Liver donor. Doctors describe it as a "one-in-six-Billion" miracle. The odds seem irrelevant. Now there'll be a determination to discover how and why it happened. If it happened once, there should be a way of getting it to happen again. It means she will no longer expect to spend the rest of her life taking anti-rejection drugs. She had the transplant when she was 9 years old, and is now 15. Perhaps as her body was still developing, and would continue to develop through puberty, her immune system had the plasticity to adapt to the change - stem cells in her marrow being reformatted by the 'invasive' liver cells and processes, with associated biofeedback - the liver and marrow coming up with a compromise. Only seven in 10 transplant operations in Australia have been successful over a five year period due to rejection complications, and similar ratios would be expected elsewhere.
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