Doctors at Duke University in the American state of North Carolina announced that a baby boy is doing well after a new kind of operation to replace his heart.The heart transplant operation, doctors said, included special tissue to help prevent rejection of the new organ.The tissue came from another person's thymus gland and was partly grown in a laboratory.The thymus gland is an organ that plays an important part in the immune system, which fights infection and disease in the human body.Doctors have wondered if implanting thymus tissue that matched a donated organ might help it survive without requiring anti-rejection medicines.Those medicines can have harmful effects on the body.Easton Sinnamon of Asheboro, North Carolina received his transplant last summer when he was 6 months old.But Duke University waited to announce the operation until after doctors learned whether the thymus implants were working.They hoped the implants would begin producing immune cells that do not treat the child's new heart like foreign tissue.
