About half of kidney transplant recipients of identical-twin transplants did not get immunosuppression
TUESDAY, Nov. 12, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Among identical-twin kidney transplants, patient and kidney graft survival rates are excellent, according to a study published online Oct. 9 in the American Journal of Transplantation.
Dana R. Jorgensen, Ph.D., M.P.H., from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and colleagues examined identical-twin kidney transplantation in the modern era using trends in the twin population from 1959 to 2000.
The researchers project that 433,010 dizygotic and monozygotic twins will be alive and at risk for developing end-stage renal failure (ESRF) by 2019. Monozygosity can be confirmed between a donor-recipient pair to a likelihood of nearly 100 percent by concordance in sex, blood type, and human leukocyte antigen matching with precision testing using 13/17 Short Tandem Repeat sequencing. Excellent patient and kidney graft survival rates were noted among 143 transplants performed between presumptive monozygotic twins during 2001 to 2017. Of kidney transplant recipients of identical-twin transplants, about 50 percent did not receive maintenance immunosuppression; among patients with and without immunosuppression at six and 12 months, there were no differences in graft survival. Lower graft survival was seen among patients with glomerulonephritis as the cause of ESRF.
“Once you confirm that the organ donor and recipient are identical, that’s really a best-case scenario,” Jorgensen said in a statement. “It’s almost like getting a transplant from yourself because the tissue would be almost identical.”
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