TORONTO, Oct 25, 2004 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Researchers at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children report newborns experience less tissue rejection after transplants than older patients.

Dr. Lori West, principal investigator of the study published in the November issue of the journal Nature Medicine, said the finding is significant as doctors now have to carefully match the blood type of the donor and recipient.

In a ground-breaking study in 2001, the researchers showed that rule does not apply to heart transplants performed in very young babies. Now, the same researchers say they have discovered the immune system of those infant patients actually gets reprogrammed.

After a transplant, the scientists said the young patient's immune system thinks both its own original blood type and the donor's blood type are its own.

Isolating how this happens could mean that matching organ donors and recipients would become much simpler, and that would both save lives and increase the number of organs that could be used in transplants.

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