Pancreatic β-cell dysfunction and risk of new-onset diabetes after kidney transplantation.

Objective: Chronic exposure to calcineurin inhibitors and corticosteroids poses renal transplant recipients (RTR) at high risk for development of new-onset diabetes after transplantation (NODAT). Pancreatic β-cell dysfunction may be crucial to the pathophysiology of NODAT and specific markers for β-cell dysfunction may have additive value for predicting NODAT in this population. Therefore, we prospectively investigated whether proinsulin, as a marker of pancreatic β-cell dysfunction, is associated with future development of NODAT and improves prediction of it.