Objective: To study the influence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection on the clinical outcome of kidney transplantation.
Methods: The recipient/graft survival, the incidence of acute/chronic rejection and cause of death in 86 HCV-infected recipients of renal transplantation were compared with those in another 86 recipients without HCV infection.
Results: HCV-infected recipients had significantly shorter 5-year survival (74.4%) than those without HCV infection (87.2%, P<0.01). The 1-year (94.2%/90.7% vs 96.8%/96.0%) and 3-year recipient/graft survival rates (88.4%/79.1% vs 90.7%/87.2%), the incidence of acute/chronic rejection (31.3% vs 21.2%, and 12.5% vs 6.5%) and the 5-year graft survival (73.3%/81.4%) were comparable between the two groups (P>0.05). Hepatic disease was identified as the primary cause of mortality.
Conclusions: HCV infection may affect the long-term survival of the recipients with kidney transplantation, and therefore should be considered as a relative contraindication of kidney transplantation.