Background: Patients with type II diabetes mellitus (DM) undergoing renal transplantation are at risk of diabetic nephropathy (DN) in the transplanted kidney. The true risk of developing post-transplantation DN is unknown, and post-transplantation DN is poorly characterized in the literature.
Methods: The biopsy database at the University of Maryland Medical Center was queried for kidney transplant biopsies which demonstrated evidence of DN. The time from transplantation to biopsy-proven DN (time to diagnosis, TTD) was calculated and analyzed in the context of demographics, serum creatinine, and onset of diabetes. By extrapolating the total number of patients who developed DN in the last 2 years, we estimated the recurrence rate of DN.
Results: Sixty patients whose renal biopsies met criteria were identified. The mean age was 56.6 (±1.58) years, and the mean creatinine level at time of biopsy was 1.65 (±0.12) mg/dL. Simultaneous pathological diagnoses were frequent on kidney biopsy; rejection was present at variable rates: classes I, IIA, IIB, and III were 5.0%, 66.7%, 18.4%, and 10%, respectively. The mean TTD was 1456 (±206) days. TTD was significantly shorter for patients receiving a cadaveric vs living donor renal transplant (1118 ± 184 vs 2470 ± 547 days, P = 0.004). Older patients (r = 0.378, P = 0.003) and patients with higher serum creatinine (r = 0.282, P = 0.029) had shorter TTDs. Extrapolations showed that 74.7% of patients would be free of DN 10 years after renal transplantation.
Conclusions: Diabetic nephropathy occurs after transplantation, and this appears to be due to both donor and recipient-derived factors. Encouragingly, our estimates suggest that as many as 75% of patients may be free of DN at 10 years following kidney transplantation.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.