Paper short abstract:

Organ transplantation is a second promise to life and at the same time is the biggest depiction of altruism by humans. How do patients react when they have to give some extra blood to ascertain biomarkers to identify a potential graft rejection that will help other patients like them?

Paper long abstract:

The long hustle to catch hold of the patients for the blood sample collection required in order to determine the biomarkers that can ascertain graft rejection in the post-transplant patients often ends with taking home their melancholic visage that screams of wanting to say a hundred words, but not willing to give even a drop of blood.

The cumbersome process of Kidney Transplantation takes a toll on the patients and even on their families, and in that scenario, seeking blood, which the patients have seen getting lost in abundance, amidst the entire process, is an awkward collaboration, where the patients' personas are known through mere name slips on the blood vials.

In the ambitious quest of finding the biomarkers, we overlook the lack of benefit the current batch of patients are at due to the rigorous process of biopsies they have to undergo. They are just motivated by us to contribute for the purpose of research that will lead to an easy detection of graft rejection through the non-invasive dd-cfDNA biomarkers which is proposed to overthrow biopsy as the only gold standard for the assertion of graft rejection.

The patients agree to save others like them from shedding more blood. The altruism that these patients receive through a donated organ is thus believed by them to be reciprocated by the blood they 'donate' for 'our' research.