Study: Donor kidneys from deceased patients with COVID-19 are ‘safe’
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Key takeaways:
- Researchers found no higher risk for graft failure or death in patients who received kidneys from COVID-19-positive donors.
- Of 2,165 recovered kidneys from active COVID-19 donors, 70.8% were transplanted.
Donor kidneys from deceased patients who had active or resolved COVID-19 were not associated with worse outcomes within 2 years after transplantation, according to recently published data.
Researchers from Washington University and Dalhousie University studied transplant outcomes in adult recipients from donors with active or resolved COVID-19.
“The COVID-19 pandemic caused an immediate and substantial decrease in solid organ transplant rates globally, with kidney transplants most affected,” Mengmeng Ji, PhD, MS, MBBS, a postdoctoral research associate in the divisions of nephrology and public health science at Washington University, wrote in the study. “We conducted a study to explore the patterns in nonuse of kidneys from deceased donors with active or previous COVID-19.”
The retrospective cohort review analyzed national U.S. transplant registry data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network database, including 35,851 deceased donors and 45,912 patients who received transplants from March 2020 to March 2023.
Primary outcomes were kidney nonuse—defined as a kidney recovered but not transplanted—all-cause kidney graft failure and patient death. Survival time for graft failure was calculated from the transplant date to the date the patient returned to dialysis.
Researchers found kidneys from donors with active or resolved COVID-19 had a higher risk for nonuse vs. kidneys from donors without the virus. However, the likelihood of nonuse of kidneys from donors with COVID-19 decreased over time, according to the study.
In 2020, kidneys from active or resolved COVID-19 donors had an 11-fold or fourfold higher likelihood of nonuse, respectively, compared with kidneys from negative donors. In 2023, kidneys from COVID-19 donors, overall, were no longer linked to higher nonuse.
In total from 2020 to 2023, of the 66,831 recovered kidneys from donors without COVID-19, 24.2% were not used while 75.8% were transplanted. Of 2,165 kidneys from active COVID-19 donors, 29.2% were not used and 70.8% were used. Among 2,338 kidneys with resolved vs. active COVID-19, 26.3% were not used and the remaining 73.7% were transplanted.
The researchers also found no higher risk for graft failure or death in patients who received kidneys from COVID-19-positive donors, no risk for acute rejection within 6 months post-transplant, and donor COVID-19 positivity was not associated with longer hospital stays, or higher risk for acute rejection or delayed graft function.
“Our findings provide evidence that the use of kidneys from COVID-19–positive donors yields safe medium-term outcomes,” Ji and colleagues wrote, “which may be useful information for [kidney transplant] professionals and patients.”
Collapse
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts