Transplanted livers can keep going for over 100 years

But new findings from researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and medical device company TransMedics in the United States have provided evidence that livers from older donors can function well.

They analysed transplant data from the United States' United Network for Organ Sharing to look at what makes these so-called "centurion livers" so resilient.

Of the 253,406 livers transplanted between 1990 to 2022, they identified 25 livers that met the criteria of being centurion livers - those with a cumulative age of over 100 years (total initial age at transplant plus post-transplant survival).

"We looked at pre-transplant survival - essentially, the donor’s age - as well as how long the liver went on to survive in the recipient," said lead study author Yash Kadakia, a medical student at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.

"We stratified out these remarkable livers with over 100-year survival and identified donor factors, recipient factors, and transplant factors involved in creating this unique combination where the liver was able to live to 100 years".

For the centurion livers that the researchers looked at, the average donor age was 84.7 years, significantly higher than the 38.5 years for the non-centurion liver transplants.

But remarkably, what they found was that these older livers had better outcomes.

The researchers also found no significant difference in rates of rejection at 12 months between the centurion group and the non-centurion group. They attribute the success of these centurion livers to a convergence of favourable factors.