Yet another Hacker News

Celebrating the 100th birthday of the kidney donated to him as a teenager

277 points gscott 1 week ago 67 comments

latchkey 5 days ago | parent

I was confused at first. Mom donated a kidney to her son and she would have been 100, making the kidney effectively 100.

agumonkey 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

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 4 days ago | parent

> 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 5 days ago | parent

> 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 5 days ago | parent

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"

lostlogin 4 days ago | parent

> making the kidney effectively 100.

And then some. They start working in utero, roughly at the end of the first trimester I think.

Wittie 5 days ago | parent

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

phibz 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

More simple put, his mother was born 100 years ago and her kidney lives on.

hammock 5 days ago | parent

Mothers kidney: 100

Son: 64

Son’s transplant of mothers kidney: 48

Typical kidney transplant lifespan: 15-20

JohnTHaller 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

Could you have gotten it back after he passed away? Or was the kidney forwarded on to someone else?

throwawayk7h 5 days ago | parent

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.

Faaak 5 days ago | parent

I don't know why you're being downvoted, because this is an interesting question to me at least

gertop 5 days ago | parent

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.

JohnTHaller 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

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 4 days ago | parent

> 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 4 days ago | parent

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.

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.

f6v 1 day ago | parent

It’s true that some stem cells leave their niche, HSCs can be found in circulation.

To your question about two people swapping kidneys, I’m not so sure. I think that depends on the T cell repertoire, and there’s a lot of variability depending on the life history. So, person A getting a graft from person B might not get the same reaction as person B getting a graft from person A.

elchief 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

Internet says, yes.

d_silin 5 days ago | parent

There is an observation that donated organs sync to a biological age of the recipient.

https://www.inc.com/lucia-auerbach/can-transplanted-heart-be...

etoxin 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

So Bryan Johnson was onto something when he was transfusing his son's blood into himself

selcuka 5 days ago | parent

It's not complete nonsense. The rejuvenating effects of young blood transfusions have been known for some time.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5836258/

aitchnyu 3 days ago | parent

The startup shut down though https://wegotthiscovered.com/fyi/wealthy-clients-paid-8000-a...

vasco 5 days ago | parent

Farming young humans to expand the lifespan of old rich ones has a little bit of a je ne sais quoi though.

msdz 4 days ago | parent

Just kill the donors as soon as possible to end their suffering, then /s

f6v 4 days ago | parent

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.

moffkalast 5 days ago | parent

So in theory you could keep an organ alive perpetually if you kept transplanting it every fifty or so years?

ocdtrekkie 5 days ago | parent

Well the average kidney transplant works for 15-20 years... so probably not.

DANmode 5 days ago | parent

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).

f6v 4 days ago | parent

Speaking strictly theoretically, I don’t think “young” environment can help with telomere shortening.

tliltocatl 4 days ago | parent

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.

zorobo 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

Yeah Putin was heard talking / bragging to Xi about it not so long ago, if I remember correctly.

lostlogin 4 days ago | parent

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.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-20/putin-russia-ukraine-...

cfiggers 5 days ago | parent

Ok so he needs to also donate it to a third person. Let's see how long we can keep it going!

selcuka 5 days ago | parent

> 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 4 days ago | parent

They could swap?

olalonde 5 days ago | parent

Stupid question but what's a Webster man?

actionfromafar 5 days ago | parent

A man living in Webster.

(Or it can be an arachnid/human hybrid, but it's probably not that.)

nephihaha 5 days ago | parent

Webster is old Scots for a weaver.

OJFord 5 days ago | parent

It ought to be the offspring of a spinster, really.

mc32 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

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 5 days ago | parent

Pretty stupid to assume familiarity with random suburbs though, unless writing in a local newspaper.

mjmas 5 days ago | parent

Not a guy that lives in a dictionary

astura 5 days ago | parent

A man who lives in Webster, in this case, Webster, New York. A suburb of Rochester.

mrb 5 days ago | parent

Apparently the oldest transplanted liver in humans is 108 years old: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/transplanted-liver...

octoberfranklin 5 days ago | parent

Yeah but livers are basically immortal. You can chop out half of your liver and it just grows back.

selcuka 5 days ago | parent

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.

[1] https://www.nhsbt.nhs.uk/organ-transplantation/liver/is-a-li...

nephihaha 5 days ago | parent

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.

formvoltron 5 days ago | parent

so cool. looking forward to organ replacement grown from stem cells.

Grimeton 5 days ago | parent

>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...

TimberTech 4 days ago | parent

Amazing

kreeWall 4 days ago | parent

Thank you for sharing. We recently had a kidney transplant in our family, and it's nice to hear positive stories of organ transplants, since we've been so fascinated with the whole science aspect of it.

CTOSian 3 days ago | parent

Congrats to him! I'm at my 90th anniversary (30+ years post-transplant), and it's been a bumpy road. The meds we take are nephrotoxic, and I've had my share of issues. To stay sane, I try to keep my mind off the transplant (retro-systems and so on..), take my daily meds, and keep moving forward.