The XO Directory

Australian teenager named Demi-Lee Brennan, became the first known transplant patient switched blood group, from O negative to O positive, after a liver transplant operation.

Demi, now 15, of Kiama, near Sydney, no longer has to take drugs to stop her body rejecting a donated liver because her blood group changed from O negative to O positive following the operation.

Doctors in New South Wales hope that her case could help thousands of other patients.

Dr Stuart Dorney, a former head of Westmead Hospital's liver transplant unit, said: "We think it happened because we used a young person's liver and Demi had low white blood cells."

Many transplants fail because of complications linked to the body rejecting the new organ.

Demi's case was outlined in this week's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

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