Research news: No ill effects found from donating kidney

The News:
No ill effects found from donating kidney
Giving up one of the organs doesn't raise renal-failure risks or affect one's long-term health, researchers say.
By Stephanie Nano The Associated Press
Posted: 01/29/2009 12:30:00 AM MST
NEW YORK — Donating a kidney doesn't appear to have any long-term health consequences for the donor, a reassuring study shows.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota found that those who gave up one of their two kidneys lived a normal life span and were as healthy as people in the general population. The donation also didn't raise the risk of having kidney failure later.
Kidney donation has generally been considered safe, although with surgery, there are always risks. The new research of nearly 3,700 donors dating back more than four decades is the largest and longest study to look at long-term outcomes, said the researchers.
They reported their findings in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
"It is a confirmation that living donation is a safe thing," said Dr. Matthew Cooper, a transplant surgeon at the University of Maryland, who was not involved in the research.
Kidneys filter waste and excess fluid from the blood. If your kidneys fail, the options are dialysis or a transplant. More than 78,000 people are on the national waiting list to receive a kidney from a deceased donor. The need for kidneys has soared with the rise in diabetes and obesity and the wait can last for years.
Living donation has increased as more people became willing to donate and newer surgery techniques shortened recovery time. In 2007, more than a third of the 16,629 kidneys transplanted in the U.S. came from living donors, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. Read on...

The Research:
Read the research behind this story in The New England Journal of Medicine.