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A young woman named Shreya Siddanagowder tragically lost her hands in a bus accident in 2016. The then 18-year-old engineering student was in a crash, which resulted in amputation from the elbow. Not willing to give up on her dreams, she became the subject of the first upper arm double-hand transplant performed in Asia. Now, her new limbs have had a very positive development. Siddanagowder reports that her hands, originally from a male donor, have become more feminine and their color is now closer to her own skin tone.
Speaking of her tragic plight, Siddanagowder told Times of India, “I had lost my hands, but not my spirit and the will to leave. I trained my toes to operate my phone, laptop, TV remote, and Kindle.” At one point, she gave prosthetic hands a try, but wasn’t happy with them. That’s when she decided to go for the bilateral hand transplant. After registering as a potential hand recipient in August 2017, she found a matching donor—a 21-year-old man named Sachin. And so, Siddanagowder underwent Asia’s first intergender hand transplant, a 13-hour endeavor.
While Siddanagowder has to take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of her life, like all transplant recipients do, the new hands have worked wonderfully for her. In a development that has surprised her doctors, the limbs, which were hairier and darker, are now lighter and resemble the rest of her body more.
Siddanagowder’s doctors suspect that this has to do with her body producing less melanin (the pigment that gives skin its color) than her donor’s did, leading to the lightening of her new limbs. Still, Dr. Uday Khopkar, head of dermatology at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai, told The Indian Express that more research is required to confirm the cause. “The nerve begins to send signals—it is called reinnervation—and the muscles function according to body needs,” says physiotherapist Ketaki Doke, who worked with Siddanagowder. “The muscles in her hand may have started adapting to a female body.”
Siddanagowder is one of the more than 130 people who have successfully received hand transplants, per Johns Hopkins Medicine. Now, the 25-year-old is due to graduate from IIM-Calcutta next year. Not only does she get to perform daily chores like dressing up, eating, and maintaining personal hygiene, but she also has been able to write again—and her handwriting even matches her penmanship from before the accident.
In 2016, a young woman named Shreya Siddanagowder tragically lost her hands in a bus accident.
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Not willing to give up on her dreams, she became the subject of the first bilateral above elbow hand transplant performed in Asia.
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Now, her new limbs have had a very positive development. Siddanagowder reports that her hands, originally from a male donor, have become more feminine and their color is closer to her skin tone.
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h/t: [LiveScience]
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