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Discusses an endovascular procedure for elderly or other patients too sick to be candidates for open heart surgery. Details of a successful percutaneous transcatheter implantation of a prosthetic valve in France; Physicians who will lead proposed clinical trials of the procedure in the United States and Europe; Mention of the Percutaneous Valve Technologies, a company in New Jersey that will fund the research; Outlook for the procedure to replace conventional aortic valve surgery.

The article presents studies which suggest that antirejection drugs are not always needed to protect kidney grafts. Researchers from Europe and the U.S. explored the prospect of identifying patients with kidney transplants who do not need to continue taking antirejection medicines in preserving their donated organ. They found that renal allograft tolerance of patients was linked to a pattern of gene expression by B lymphocytes.