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Renal transplant recipients at greater risk for melanoma
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Renal transplant recipients had a greater risk than the general population for melanoma, according to recently published study results in JAMA Dermatology.
Researchers used the United States Renal Data System (USRDS) database to study 105,174 renal transplant recipients (mean age, 49.6 years; 60.7% male) between 2004 and 2012.
Patients with melanoma were identified using ICD-9-CM code for melanoma. Patients were excluded if they had a history of pretransplant melanoma, previous kidney transplantation or transplantation after 2012 or before 2004.
Data were analyzed between 2015 and 2016.
There were 488 (0.4%) patients who developed melanoma after transplantation.
When comparing patients who developed melanoma with those who did not, significant risk factors included older recipient (mean age, 60.5 years vs. 49.7 years) and donor ages (mean age, 42.6 years vs. 39.2 years), male sex (71.5% vs. 60.7%), white race for recipient (96.1% vs. 66.5%) and donor (92.4% vs. 82.9%), fewer than four HLA mismatches (44.9% vs. 37.1%), living donors (44.7% vs. 33.7%), and sirolimus (22.3% vs. 13.2%) and cyclosporine (4.9% vs. 3.2%) therapies.
Using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) population for comparison, there was an overall relative rate of melanoma for USRDS patients of 4.9, which indicated that USRDS patients were 4.99 times more likely to develop melanoma.
Median time to development of melanoma among patients who developed melanoma was 1.45 years, according to a Kaplan-Meir estimate.
“Renal transplant recipients are at greater risk of developing melanoma than the general population,” the researchers concluded. “We provide detailed information and identified several important trends and risk factors in this vulnerable patient group that we believe can guide clinicians in providing adequate care.” – by Bruce Thiel
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.