title: Highly successful long-term outcome of kidney transplantation in Chinese recipients: an enhancing race effect?
abstract: We report on 352 cadaveric kidney transplants and 294 living related transplants performed over a 25-yr period among the Chinese population of Hong Kong. There is a marked preference for transplanting male patients, especially from living donors, and we argue that this represents a cultural phenomenon within the Chinese population. The 10-yr graft survivals for related and cadaveric transplants are 86.2% and 67.4%, respectively. These figures are appreciably higher than corresponding figures in Caucasian populations. We show beneficial effects of using cyclosporin A, minimizing the cold ischemia time and avoiding very young and very old donors. There is a clear benefit of transplanting kidneys with zero or one mismatched HLA antigen against the recipient but no stepwise decrease in outcome as the number of mismatched antigens increases. There is close concordance between the outcome of living related grafts with zero, one, and two mismatched haplotypes against the recipient and no observable benefit of haplotype matching. We show that Chinese renal transplant recipients in other centers also have better long-term graft outcome than Caucasians, both for cadaveric and living related transplants. We draw attention to the existence of a detrimental "race effect" in other studies when Black recipients are compared with Caucasians and consider whether an enhancing race effect exists for Chinese or whether the better outcome reflects different underlying diseases in Chinese.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.
authors.forename: B R
authors.initials: BR
authors.lastname: Hawkins
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: Y T
authors.initials: YT
authors.lastname: Chan
authors.forename: I K
authors.initials: IK
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.forename: K O
authors.initials: KO
authors.lastname: Cheung
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fenn
authors.forename: K K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Ho
authors.forename: K N
authors.initials: KN
authors.lastname: Lai
authors.forename: C S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: S F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Lui
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Opelz
authors.forename: M K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Tong
mesh_terms: D000206:Actuarial Analysis; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D044466:Asian People; D044383:Black People; D002102:Cadaver; D002681:China / Q000208:ethnology; D015925:Cryopreservation; D003469:Culture; D016572:Cyclosporine / Q000627:therapeutic use; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006085:Graft Survival; D006680:HLA Antigens / Q000032:analysis; D006239:Haplotypes; D006648:Histocompatibility; D006723:Hong Kong / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D007166:Immunosuppressive Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use; D007674:Kidney Diseases / Q000503:physiopathology; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D019520:Living Donors / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012737:Sex Factors; D013997:Time Factors; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D044465:White People
chemical_list: D006680:HLA Antigens; D007166:Immunosuppressive Agents; D016572:Cyclosporine