Renal Transplant Improves Survival in ESRD Due to Lupus

WEDNESDAY, Jan. 23, 2019 (HealthDay News) — For patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) due to lupus nephritis (LN), renal transplant is associated with a survival benefit, according to a study published online Jan. 22 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

April Jorge, M.D., from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues examined the potential effect of renal transplant on survival among patients with LN-ESRD in the United States. Participants included 9,659 patients with LN-ESRD who were waitlisted for a renal transplant.

The researchers found that 59 percent of the patients had a transplant; they were mainly female and nonwhite (82 and 60 percent, respectively). Among waitlisted patients, transplant correlated with reduced all-cause mortality (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.30). For cause-specific mortality, the adjusted hazard ratios were 0.26, 0.30, 0.41, and 0.41 for cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, infection, and sepsis, respectively.

“Jorge and colleagues strongly reinforce the substantial survival benefit associated with kidney transplant in patients with kidney failure due to LN,” write the authors of an accompanying editorial. “Because data from other studies have suggested higher patient and allograft survival with both preemptive and early kidney transplant, it is essential that transplant be considered as promptly as possible for patients with LN and that barriers to early transplant be surmounted.”

One author disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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