Common Diseases Acquired Through Tissue Transplants

There are three primary goals the FDA wishes to achieve in regards to human tissues and bone transplants:

1. To prevent the spread of communicable diseases.
2. To ensure that safety and efficacy is demonstrated for cellular and tissue-based products that are also drug, biological and medical device products.
3. To help enchance publich confidence in this products so that, where appropiate, they can fulfill their great potential for saving and improving lives.

The use of human tissue has increased over the past several; creating the need to ensure greater safety methods and the need to minimize more of the potential risks. With a ten year span, 1980 - 1990, several incidents occured which prompted the FDA to investigate its approach to tissue transplant safety. In the '80s there were many reports of transmission of the dengenerative neurological disorder, Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD), by dura mater allografts. Then in 1992 seven people were diagnosised with HIV. A single donor infected each of the individuals through transplantation of organs and/or tissue.

As recently as the year 2000, even with improved testing methods implemented by the FDA, three confirmed organ recipients were determined to be infected by hepatitis C. This is in addition to six probable recipients who received tissues from a single donor.

A donor does not necessarily cause contamination to tissues. Contamination can occur from outside elements, such as bacteria or fungus. When bacterial or fungi contamination occurs this has very little to do with the donor from which they were collected. These types of contaminiations generally happen during handling, processing and testing of the tissue.

If you have received a tissue or bone transplant and suspect that you may have been infected, you can order a home testing kit from www.tSTD.org. The kit offered covers std testing, many of the viruses and diseases screened are those that are typically encountered when dealing with infected tissue transplants.