The math here is a little confusing, but that's an exceptionally long lived organ. For reference I received a kidney transplant from my mother at 16. It lasted 19 years after being transplanted. My mother was 68 when I had to return to dialysis.
astura 1 days ago [-]
TFA mentioned this is very exceptional, it says both that it's the longest lasting transplant this hospital has ever done and that a living kidney donation typically lasts 15 to 20 years. Meaning your 19 years is typical.
The transplant itself was done 48 years ago and the mother was 52 at the time (thus the kidney was already 52 yrs old at the time of transplant)
martyvis 1 days ago [-]
More simple put, his mother was born 100 years ago and her kidney lives on.
hammock 1 days ago [-]
Mothers kidney: 100
Son: 64
Son’s transplant of mothers kidney: 48
Typical kidney transplant lifespan: 15-20
Wittie 1 days ago [-]
The detail that got me: both on gurneys holding hands, and the mom crying tells him "don't worry about a thing, I've got a Genesis concert and I'm not missing it". They both made it to the concert. He still has the ticket stub
d_silin 1 days ago [-]
There is an observation that donated organs sync to a biological age of the recipient.
Yeah, this had me thinking. Does transplanting older organs into younger bodies force the body to rejuvenate the transplanted organ to the recipients age.
Edit: your article say so, neat.
WhyNotHugo 1 days ago [-]
I vaguely recall that it's the blood itself which has a big impact — to the point where blood transplants from younger blood could (temporarily) "rejuvenate" an older metabolism.
dasyud 23 hours ago [-]
So Bryan Johnson was onto something when he was transfusing his son's blood into himself
f6v 11 hours ago [-]
I don’t know who that is and I’m sure he couldn’t have transfused “blood”. But parabiosis experiments in mice uncovered that certain components present in young blood (like PF4) can be beneficial.
vasco 15 hours ago [-]
Farming young humans to expand the lifespan of old rich ones has a little bit of a je ne sais quoi though.
msdz 11 hours ago [-]
Just kill the donors as soon as possible to end their suffering, then /s
selcuka 15 hours ago [-]
It's not complete nonsense. The rejuvenating effects of young blood transfusions have been known for some time.
So in theory you could keep an organ alive perpetually if you kept transplanting it every fifty or so years?
tliltocatl 10 hours ago [-]
The problem is histological compatibility, i. e. not getting it ruined by the recipient's immune system. The TFA was very lucky having apparently 100% compatibility.
f6v 11 hours ago [-]
Speaking strictly theoretically, I don’t think “young” environment can help with telomere shortening.
ocdtrekkie 24 hours ago [-]
Well the average kidney transplant works for 15-20 years... so probably not.
DANmode 23 hours ago [-]
That’s not how causation works.
People with infection and or endocrine failure who need an organ are more apt to need another organ (due to age - or endocrine failure again).
Yeah but livers are basically immortal. You can chop out half of your liver and it just grows back.
selcuka 15 hours ago [-]
They can actually transplant a single liver to two people by splitting it [1].
> Approximately 1 in 10 donated livers can be divided into two segments or grafts (this is known as split liver). [...] By splitting the liver into two segments, the donated liver can be used to help two people waiting for a liver transplant.
Not so sure about that. A liver can take a heck of a beating, but speak to enough (recovering) alcoholics and you'll find plenty that have managed to knacker their livers.
cfiggers 1 days ago [-]
Ok so he needs to also donate it to a third person. Let's see how long we can keep it going!
selcuka 15 hours ago [-]
> he needs to also donate it to a third person
It's more difficult to do it while you are alive when you have a single kidney.
lostlogin 2 hours ago [-]
They could swap?
TimberTech 11 minutes ago [-]
Amazing
JohnTHaller 1 days ago [-]
I donated a kidney to my Dad in 2000. It gave him an extra 23 years with us. He was on very low doses of his anti-rejection meds, partially due to us being a 4 out of 6 HLA type match, so the doctors were hopeful it would last him the rest of his life. It would have lasted far longer if ALS hadn't shown up.
saulpw 1 days ago [-]
Could you have gotten it back after he passed away? Or was the kidney forwarded on to someone else?
JohnTHaller 24 hours ago [-]
Kidney transplantation is major surgery with decent risks. Donation carries a certain level of risk as well but less than being a recipient. When I donated, the chance of dying was about 1 in 4,000.
Since I donated, my remaining kidney has grown larger and taken over a chunk of the function of my missing kidney. If possible, getting it back would only give me a relatively small benefit compared to the risk of the surgery. First, I'd have a spare again for major injuries meaning I'd be 'allowed' to do things like contact sports and such. It's recommended you don't do things that could result in an impact to your kidney when you don't have a spare. I did violate this once by going skydiving, though.
Second, I'd be able to take anti-inflammatory meds without restrictions. That is an annoying one as when I injured my rotator cuff years ago, the normal recommendation was a month of high-dose anti-inflammatory meds. Since I couldn't do that, I had to do physical therapy and injected steroids which was much more involved and more expensive.
Note that a transplanted kidney can be re-transplanted depending on the health of the recipient when they die. It's not as common but it has been more in recent years. It's often referred to as "regifting".
hinkley 14 hours ago [-]
Your kidney is probably peppered with your dad’s stem cells which means you’d have to be on antirejection medications just like he was.
f6v 10 hours ago [-]
> peppered with your dad’s stem cells
Not sure which “stem cells” you mean, but I think the recipient’s immune cells colonize the graft. Which means they’d start attacking the original donor(graft versus host disease in reverse).
hinkley 3 hours ago [-]
In an organ, wouldn’t the immune cells migrate throughout the entire body due to circulation?
Stem cells do move through the body from time to time, so I would expect the donated organ to become a bit chimeric over time.
But you’re probably correct that the immune cells transferred would also be the same problem. But that’s what anti rejection drugs are meant to deal with, aren’t they?
Assuming two people have the same blood type, I believe the compatibility factors are reciprocal between two people, aren’t they? So if you and I are compatible, and of the same level of health, then if we swapped kidneys we should each have about the same risk factors for rejection.
But if as some people were asking, we took a transplanted organ and transplanted again, the compatibilities are not reciprocal any more, and I would not be surprised if you had to assay all three people to figure out the compatibility of the organ. Since it’s my tissue (and perhaps a bit of yours), your T cells, and the recipient’s immune system all having to get along, at least until your immune cells age out, and perhaps longer if the organ is chimeric.
throwawayk7h 1 days ago [-]
Not sure why your question is being downvoted. I think it would be fascinating to read about a kidney making a journey from son to father to son.
gertop 1 days ago [-]
You can't get it back there's nothing to attach it to. There's also no point for the risks involved.
Organs can be transplanted twice but it's very rare and it's usually when the first recipient dies shortly after the transplant. It's called (quite obviously) retransplantation if you want to Google it.
Faaak 1 days ago [-]
I don't know why you're being downvoted, because this is an interesting question to me at least
latchkey 1 days ago [-]
I was confused at first. Mom donated a kidney to her son and she would have been 100, making the kidney effectively 100.
lostlogin 2 hours ago [-]
> making the kidney effectively 100.
And then some. They start working in utero, roughly at the end of the first trimester I think.
agumonkey 1 days ago [-]
thanks for the clarification, still fascinating that the organ could live that long .. what if the son gives the kidney to a teen again ?
phibz 1 days ago [-]
That won't happen. Even though it's still adequate for him it's very likely preforming under what a typical healthy kidney performs at. Long term slow rejection is nearly impossible to eliminate. No kidney transplant is forever and only in truly exceptional cases does it last the lifetime of the recipient.
sokoloff 8 hours ago [-]
> only in truly exceptional cases does it last the lifetime of the recipient.
Well, sometimes they do, just not the way we’d hope they did…
bmacho 1 days ago [-]
> fascinating that the organ could live that long
All types of organs can live that long, there are 100 years old humans around. Probably many types of organs could live much longer, we don't know that, the humans having them die first.
agumonkey 1 days ago [-]
I didn't read the article, apologies, but did they say the kidney was under-performing ? my comment above is badly trying to say "it's 100 and about to go much further"
4 hours ago [-]
4 hours ago [-]
5 hours ago [-]
Grimeton 23 hours ago [-]
>Vetuskey only needs to visit Strong Hospital once a year for a check-up, and doctors believe the century-old kidney could last him the rest of his life.
Yeah well...
olalonde 1 days ago [-]
Stupid question but what's a Webster man?
mjmas 23 hours ago [-]
Not a guy that lives in a dictionary
actionfromafar 1 days ago [-]
A man living in Webster.
(Or it can be an arachnid/human hybrid, but it's probably not that.)
nephihaha 13 hours ago [-]
Webster is old Scots for a weaver.
OJFord 13 hours ago [-]
It ought to be the offspring of a spinster, really.
astura 23 hours ago [-]
A man who lives in Webster, in this case, Webster, New York. A suburb of Rochester.
mc32 1 days ago [-]
These days
City + Person means someone living in such city. They don’t say “from + place” because that implies origin which they try to avoid these days.
dotancohen 18 hours ago [-]
I interpret Webster Man to imply origin even more strongly than "from Webster". The noun phrasing implies long term stability, objects don't change from one noun to another noun when they change locations.
OJFord 13 hours ago [-]
Pretty stupid to assume familiarity with random suburbs though, unless writing in a local newspaper.
elchief 1 days ago [-]
i wonder if there are any kidneys or other organs on their 3rd person...
like the donee dies, and the original kidney goes on to someone else
saalweachter 23 hours ago [-]
Internet says, yes.
formvoltron 1 days ago [-]
so cool. looking forward to organ replacement grown from stem cells.
kittikitti 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
throwawayk7h 1 days ago [-]
I know we're not supposed to feed the trolls here but... dang it I am legitimately intrigued about your usage of "these days" here. Do you believe it's more common now than it used to be? And that it's some sign of recent societal decay?
whatshisface 1 days ago [-]
He's just on HN while he waits for the build (of the pyramids).
kittikitti 23 hours ago [-]
I think we should stop routinely genitally mutilating infants in America and I will gladly troll about this.
wizzwizz4 10 hours ago [-]
If you think your cause is important, and you have a finite amount of time available to advocate for it, wouldn't it be better to perform more effective advocacy than trolling? Maybe look at the work of organisations like https://www.intersexequality.com/: this one isn't focused specifically on circumcision, but there's overlap, bolstering that cause will make yours easier, and their strategies are likely to be applicable to your cause.
mock-possum 1 days ago [-]
Isn’t it ironic
zorobo 1 days ago [-]
I read somewhere that transplanted organs adopt the age of the recipient, contradicting the hopes of people who want to live forever by replacing their organs regularly.
Didn’t Putin allude to that recently ?
In any case that’d be good news, it would augment the organ availability by allowing older donors!
bjornsing 1 days ago [-]
Yeah Putin was heard talking / bragging to Xi about it not so long ago, if I remember correctly.
lostlogin 2 hours ago [-]
The idea that Putin dies of old age is hilarious.
He is a scared man - I don’t think ‘paranoid’ is the right word, as his fear is legitimate.
The transplant itself was done 48 years ago and the mother was 52 at the time (thus the kidney was already 52 yrs old at the time of transplant)
Son: 64
Son’s transplant of mothers kidney: 48
Typical kidney transplant lifespan: 15-20
https://www.inc.com/lucia-auerbach/can-transplanted-heart-be...
Edit: your article say so, neat.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5836258/
People with infection and or endocrine failure who need an organ are more apt to need another organ (due to age - or endocrine failure again).
> Approximately 1 in 10 donated livers can be divided into two segments or grafts (this is known as split liver). [...] By splitting the liver into two segments, the donated liver can be used to help two people waiting for a liver transplant.
[1] https://www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/organ-transplantation/liver/is-a-li...
It's more difficult to do it while you are alive when you have a single kidney.
Since I donated, my remaining kidney has grown larger and taken over a chunk of the function of my missing kidney. If possible, getting it back would only give me a relatively small benefit compared to the risk of the surgery. First, I'd have a spare again for major injuries meaning I'd be 'allowed' to do things like contact sports and such. It's recommended you don't do things that could result in an impact to your kidney when you don't have a spare. I did violate this once by going skydiving, though.
Second, I'd be able to take anti-inflammatory meds without restrictions. That is an annoying one as when I injured my rotator cuff years ago, the normal recommendation was a month of high-dose anti-inflammatory meds. Since I couldn't do that, I had to do physical therapy and injected steroids which was much more involved and more expensive.
Note that a transplanted kidney can be re-transplanted depending on the health of the recipient when they die. It's not as common but it has been more in recent years. It's often referred to as "regifting".
Not sure which “stem cells” you mean, but I think the recipient’s immune cells colonize the graft. Which means they’d start attacking the original donor(graft versus host disease in reverse).
Stem cells do move through the body from time to time, so I would expect the donated organ to become a bit chimeric over time.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcmm.13422
But you’re probably correct that the immune cells transferred would also be the same problem. But that’s what anti rejection drugs are meant to deal with, aren’t they?
Assuming two people have the same blood type, I believe the compatibility factors are reciprocal between two people, aren’t they? So if you and I are compatible, and of the same level of health, then if we swapped kidneys we should each have about the same risk factors for rejection.
But if as some people were asking, we took a transplanted organ and transplanted again, the compatibilities are not reciprocal any more, and I would not be surprised if you had to assay all three people to figure out the compatibility of the organ. Since it’s my tissue (and perhaps a bit of yours), your T cells, and the recipient’s immune system all having to get along, at least until your immune cells age out, and perhaps longer if the organ is chimeric.
Organs can be transplanted twice but it's very rare and it's usually when the first recipient dies shortly after the transplant. It's called (quite obviously) retransplantation if you want to Google it.
And then some. They start working in utero, roughly at the end of the first trimester I think.
Well, sometimes they do, just not the way we’d hope they did…
All types of organs can live that long, there are 100 years old humans around. Probably many types of organs could live much longer, we don't know that, the humans having them die first.
Yeah well...
(Or it can be an arachnid/human hybrid, but it's probably not that.)
like the donee dies, and the original kidney goes on to someone else
Didn’t Putin allude to that recently ?
In any case that’d be good news, it would augment the organ availability by allowing older donors!
He is a scared man - I don’t think ‘paranoid’ is the right word, as his fear is legitimate.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-20/putin-russia-ukraine-...