Transplantation News

A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine identified new risks to kidney donors that include concerns about escalating blood pressure and increased odds for preeclampsia.

A cytomegalovirus seropositive vaccine for stem-cell transplant recipients did not meet secondary and primary endpoints in recent phase 3 trials, according to a press release from developers Astellas Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Vical Inc.

Women who are overweight and have donated a kidney may be at a greater risk for preeclampsia during pregnancy, according to a recently published study.

An analysis of registry data from the United Network for Organ Sharing suggests that human leukocyte antigen matching, ¬compared to human leukocyte antigens non-matching results, is a reliable predictor of organ health for patients undergoing kidney transplantation.

With the scarcity of organs available for transplant worldwide, centers have looked at the risks and rewards of transplanting older or compromised deceased donor kidneys into older-age recipients. Two studies presented during ASN’s Kidney Week examined results from two transplant centers to determine if the outcomes were positive.

Despite interventions during the last 2 decades aimed at reducing the racial and ethnic barriers for patients pursuing live kidney donation, a study recently published in JAMA shows live kidney donation remains elusive for many patients.

A new technique called normothermic machine perfusion might help transplant teams assess the quality of a kidney before it is selected for transplantation, according to research published in the British Medical Journal.

Robot-assisted laparoscopic surgery to remove a patient's entire kidney requires slightly longer operating times and results in increased costs compared with the use of traditional laparoscopic surgery, according to a large, multiyear analysis conducted by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. However, the two approaches have comparable patient outcomes and lengths of hospital stay, the study showed.

Kidney failure is associated with lower quality of life in young people compared with healthy peers, according to an analysis appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). 

Limiting cold ischemia times could increase the amount of available kidneys donated after circulatory death (DCD), according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Between 2008 and 2015, 20% of DCD kidneys were discarded, varying from 3% to 33% among donor service areas.