Q: How is the donor selected for kidney transplantation?

A:Donors are selected according to genetic match. The greater the match the better the transplant, therefore the best match in the world is between identical twins. But this kind of donor is very rare, so the next best thing is a brother or sister, and some of them could even be like twins, what is known as full house match, where two children of a family; could have the same inheritance from both the parents. Next come other brothers and sisters but they should be at least 50% match. Next only are parents and children. Then come others such as grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts. The further you move away in relationship by blood, the worse the donor. Of course the blood groups must match also, following the same rules as blood donation. People are also doing transplants against blood groups but the experience in our country is not very big. So you can see why unrelated transplants, cadaver transplants, etc. come lower in the list of donors although people try their best to match them as well, and the larger the pool the greater the chance of finding a donor good enough. Drugs have been developed, therefore, to overcome match but people are still struggling and have not found the ideal answer.