title: Prognostic factors of long-term allograft survival in 632 CyA-treated recipients of a primary renal transplant.
abstract: A total of 632 cyclosporin (CyA)-treated primary renal allograft recipients with a functioning graft at 6 months were retrospectively evaluated for risk factors correlated with long-term allograft function. Mean follow-up after the 6th month was 68.4 +/- 40.6 months. One hundred twenty-one of these patients (19%) were lost: 29 died (23/29 with a functioning graft), 77 of the remaining 92 (83%) lost their graft because of chronic allograft dysfunction, 9 due to recurrence of glomerulonephritis, 5 due to renal artery thrombosis, and 1 due to chronic CyA toxicity. At univariate analysis, factors correlated with a better renal (R) and pure renal (PR) allograft survival were: dialysis duration of less than 5 years, fewer than 2 rejections within the 6th post-Tx month, immediate graft function recovery, plasma creatinine below 1.5 mg/dl at the 6th month, age at Tx above 15 years, and receiving a living donor graft. Cox's regression analysis was also performed to obtain relative risks for the same parameters. Long-term dialysis patients had more frequent late recoveries (P = 0.002) and reductions in therapy (P = 0.01) in order to reduce the side effects of steroids. In young patients receiving an initial oral CyA dose of 17 mg/kg per day, steroids were stopped at the 6th month in order to achieve catch-up growth: only one such patient lost his graft. In contrast, 72% of the young patients who lost their grafts received an initial oral CyA dosage of 13 mg/ kg per day. Thus, young patients did worse not because of steroid withdrawal, but because of inadequate initial CyA dosage. These results suggest that although we cannot exclude alloantigen-independent mechanisms as factors that stimulate progression of chronic allograft dysfunction, it would appear that the initial lesions are induced by events mostly mediated by immunological mechanisms.
authors.affiliation: Divisione di Nefrologia e Dialisi, Ospedale Maggiore IRCCS, Milano, Italy.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Montagnino
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tarantino
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Cesana
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rossini
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Da Milano
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Arodi
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Elli
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ponticelli
mesh_terms: D016572:Cyclosporine / Q000494:pharmacology*; D005260:Female; D006085:Graft Survival; D006801:Humans; D007166:Immunosuppressive Agents / Q000494:pharmacology*; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000276:immunology*; D008297:Male; D011379:Prognosis; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous
chemical_list: D007166:Immunosuppressive Agents; D016572:Cyclosporine