Background: Successful renal transplantation has been performed in patients with end-stage renal disease and has been routine in patients with end-stage renal failure for more than two decades. Despite advances in the use of immunosuppressants, there has been only modest improvement in long-term allograft survival. Accumulating data have demonstrated that chronic rejection and recurrent glomerulonephritis are major causes of long-term allograft loss. However, data regarding the long-term impact of posttransplantation glomerulonephritis (PTGN) on ethnic Chinese populations are still unavailable.
Methods: From 1984 to 2010, a total of 268 patients who underwent renal allograft biopsies were reviewed retrospectively. Renal outcomes were compared by Kaplan-Meier analysis, and risk factors for renal survival and all-cause mortality were analyzed using the Cox proportional hazards model.
Results: In all, 85 patients (31.7%) had PTGN, and the mean time of disease onset was 5.32±5.18 years after transplantation. Among the 85 PTGN cases, 33 (39%) were immunoglobulin A (IgA) nephropathy, 24 (28%) were focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, and 8 (9.4%) were membranous GN. Significant risk was associated with posttransplant IgA GN in hepatitis B virus carriers (odds ratio 5.371, 95% confidence interval 1.68, 17.19; p=0.0064). A total of 45 PTGN patients had allograft loss, of whom 49% had IgA nephropathy. Patients with PTGN had inferior allograft survival rates compared to those with other pathologic findings (p<0.0003).
Conclusions: Taken together, our results indicate that PTGN had a strong negative impact on long-term kidney graft survival. Posttransplant IgA nephropathy is a leading cause of allograft loss in Chinese kidney transplant patients with PTGN.