title: Loss of pediatric kidney grafts during the "high-risk age window": insights from pediatric liver and simultaneous liver-kidney recipients.
abstract: Pediatric kidney transplant recipients experience a high-risk age window of increased graft loss during late adolescence and early adulthood that has been attributed primarily to sociobehavioral mechanisms such as nonadherence. An examination of how this age window affects recipients of other organs may inform the extent to which sociobehavioral mechanisms are to blame or whether kidney-specific biologic mechanisms may also exist. Graft loss risk across current recipient age was compared between pediatric kidney (n = 17,446), liver (n = 12,161) and simultaneous liver-kidney (n = 224) transplants using piecewise-constant hazard rate models. Kidney graft loss during late adolescence and early adulthood (ages 17-24 years) was significantly greater than during ages <17 (aHR = 1.79, 95%CI = 1.69-1.90, p < 0.001) and ages >24 (aHR = 1.11, 95%CI = 1.03-1.20, p = 0.005). In contrast, liver graft loss during ages 17-24 was no different than during ages <17 (aHR = 1.03, 95%CI = 0.92-1.16, p = 0.6) or ages >24 (aHR = 1.18, 95%CI = 0.98-1.42, p = 0.1). In simultaneous liver-kidney recipients, a trend towards increased kidney compared to liver graft loss was observed during ages 17-24 years. Late adolescence and early adulthood are less detrimental to pediatric liver grafts compared to kidney grafts, suggesting that sociobehavioral mechanisms alone may be insufficient to create the high-risk age window and that additional biologic mechanisms may also be required.
authors.affiliation: Department of Surgery, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD.
authors.forename: K J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Van Arendonk
authors.forename: E A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: King
authors.forename: B J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Orandi
authors.forename: N T
authors.initials: NT
authors.lastname: James
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: P M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Colombani
authors.forename: J C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Magee
authors.forename: D L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Segev
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006084:Graft Rejection / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D007223:Infant; D016030:Kidney Transplantation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016031:Liver Transplantation / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008297:Male; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D012042:Registries; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D018570:Risk Assessment; D066027:Transplant Recipients; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Clinical research/practice; graft survival; kidney (allograft) function/dysfunction; kidney transplantation/nephrology; liver allograft function/dysfunction; liver transplantation/hepatology; pediatrics