Just because a transplant was successful, it doesn’t mean the problems are over. In many cases, a patient’s immune system attacks the transplanted organ or tissue in a normal attempt to destroy anything foreign to the body. In other words, many patients have to take antirejection drugs for years after the transplant, and in some cases for the rest of their lives.

A study published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine uncovers the development of a technique that could put an end to the use of immune-suppressing medicines years after the transplant was made. The treatment implies bone marrow transplant from the person who donated the organ to the patient. In four of the five cases, the recipients were off the antirejection drugs within the first five years of the transplant.

Scientists have been concerned with finding a way to trick the immune system into fully accepting the transplanted organ for more than half a century, and the new technique could put an end to the numerous cases of organ rejection and a lifetime of immune-suppressing medicines. The best part about it is that the success rate is high, considering that the patients, who in this particular case received kidney transplants, were given organs with different tissue type.

Dr. David H. Sachs and his team of researchers are optimistic about the new method and see it as part of what in the future may become the basic technique for any tissue or organ transplant. If the technique proves to be efficient, not only would it improve the lives of the patients, but it will also increase the life expectancy, as most transplanted organs tend to fail within 10 years after the intervention, due to chronic rejection.

The study of marrow injection method has not reached its end yet, as there are still patients out there who were not off the immune-suppressing drugs afterwards. This is however a discovery that will revolutionize the organ transplants like never before and patients will not be forced to wait in line for so long before being given the chance to surpass their illnesses and live a normal life afterwards.