PRAGUE—Renal transplant recipients who have anemia three months after receiving a kidney are more likely to have anemia more than six months post-transplant, according to researchers.
Use of cyclosporine and renal allograft dysfunction also predict a higher risk of anemia more than six months post-transplant.
The findings, reported at the European Renal Association-European Dialysis and Transplant Association 48th congress, are based on a study that included 170 renal transplant recipients with a mean age of about 50 years and a mean time on dialysis of 157 months.
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Compared with patients who did not have anemia at three months post-transplant, those who did had an 11 times increased risk of anemia more than six months after transplantation, after adjusting for multiple confounders. Cyclosporine use was associated with an 11.6 times increased risk compared with non-use. Compared with patients in the first quartile of serum creatinine, those in the fourth quartile had a 5.4 times increased risk.
Researchers at Hospital Santo Antonio in Porto, Portugal, led by Sophia Rocha, MD, defined anemia as a hemoglobin level below 12 g/dL in women and less than 13 g/dL in men.
Post-transplant anemia was not associated with gender, age of the recipient or donor, diabetes, hypertension, dyslipidemia, left ventricular hypertrophy, and other factors.
