Kidney Donors are at Increased Risk of Ischemic Heart Disease, finds study

Previous meta-analyses and several studies suggest that living donors have increased blood pressure and proteinuria after donation. Proteinuria, hypertension and reduced renal function are all risk factors for the development of the cardiovascular disease. To further evaluate risk following kidney donation researchers of the Oslo University Hospital, Norway, conducted a study to investigate the occurrence of ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease, diabetes and cancer in live kidney donors compared with healthy controls eligible for donation.

It was a post-hoc analysis in which researchers assessed for different diagnosis in 1029 kidney donors and 16084 controls. The diagnoses at follow-up were self-reported for the controls and registered by a physician for the donors. They used self-reported data of the controls and retrieved data from the Norwegian Renal Registry for the donors. They further used the stratified logistic regression to estimate associations with various disease outcomes, adjusted for gender, age at follow up, smoking at baseline, body mass index at baseline, systolic blood pressure at baseline and time since the donation.

Key findings of the study were:

• The mean (standard deviation) observation time was 11.3 (8.1) years for donors versus 16.4 (5.7) years for controls.

• At follow up, researchers have noted a higher incidence of ischemic heart disease among donors (3.5%) than in controls (1.7%).

• They also noted that the adjusted odds ratio for ischemic heart disease was 1.64 in donors compared with controls.

• However, they found no such significant differences in the risks of cerebrovascular disease, diabetes or cancer.

The authors concluded, "During long-term follow-up of kidney donors, we find an increased risk of ischemic heart disease compared to healthy controls. This information may be important in the follow-up and selection process of living kidney donors."

For further information:

https://academic.oup.com/ndt/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ndt/gfab054/6149130