Racial Variation of Donor-Derived Cell-Free DNA in Kidney Transplant Recipients.

Introduction: There is a need for a noninvasive, affordable, sensitive, and specific biomarker to diagnose early acute rejection, to negate the need for frequent biopsies. Dd-cfDNA is a powerful adjunct yet there is limited data on the ethnic differences in its values. There is anecdotal evidence that dd-cfDNA values at rejection may be higher in Black as compared to non-Black recipients.

Pancreatic Exocrine Secretion and Weight Gain After Pancreas Transplantation.

Introduction: Weight gain after pancreas transplant is a poorly understood phenomenon thought to be related to increased posttransplant insulin production, immunosuppressive medications, and appetite changes. No study has investigated the effect of increased exocrine secretion posttransplant.

Aims And Hypothesis: We hypothesized that exocrine function, measured by fecal elastase-1 (FE-1), was normal posttransplant and not correlated with weight gain.

Best practices to optimize utilization of the National Living Donor Assistance Center for the financial assistance of living organ donors.

Living organ donors face direct costs when donating an organ, including transportation, lodging, meals, and lost wages. For those most in need, the National Living Donor Assistance Center (NLDAC) provides reimbursement to defray travel and subsistence costs associated with living donor evaluation, surgery, and follow-up. While this program currently supports 9% of all US living donors, there is tremendous variability in its utilization across US transplant centers, which may limit patient access to living donor transplantation.

Extrarenal determinants of kidney filter function.

The kidney is an organ involved in cross talk with many human organs. The link between the immune system and the kidney has been studied in some detail, although data precisely elucidating their interaction are sparse, in particular with regard to the function of the kidney filter apparatus. Current research suggests that an understanding of the impairment of this cross talk between the bone marrow, as a fundament of the immune system and the kidney will provide meaningful insights into the pathophysiological mechanisms of impaired kidney filter function.

We Wait Too Long to Refer Patients for Transplantation.

Late referral of patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and end-stage renal disease (ESRD) for evaluation of kidney transplantation is common. Even though renal transplantation offers a clear survival benefit to patients with advanced CKD and ESRD and should be considered the renal replacement therapy of choice, numerous barriers to early renal transplant referral have been observed. Some of these barriers can be overcome by improving the communication between the referring providers and the transplant centers.

Living-Donor Kidney Transplantation: Reducing Financial Barriers to Live Kidney Donation--Recommendations from a Consensus Conference.

Live-donor kidney transplantation (LDKT) is the best treatment for eligible people with late-stage kidney disease. Despite this, living kidney donation rates have declined in the United States in recent years. A potential source of this decline is the financial impact on potential and actual living kidney donors (LKDs).

Twenty-five year evolution of kidney transplantation at the Ohio State University.

Over the course of the last 25 years, we have seen dramatic improvements in the outcomes following kidney transplantation at The Ohio State University. With the employment of each new pharmacologic or biologic agent, came a reduction in the incidence of acute rejection within the first post-transplant year and beyond as reported in these analyses. This dramatic reduction in acute rejection over progressive eras translated into significantly improved graft survivals.

Increased risk of cervical dysplasia in long-term survivors of allogeneic stem cell transplantation--implications for screening and HPV vaccination.

As more women survive allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT), the development of genital human papilloma virus (HPV)-related squamous intraepithelial lesions (SIL) warrants study. Thirty-five of 38 females followed prospectively long-term after SCT for hematological malignancies (median: 7 years posttransplant) were adults and had cervical cytology testing. Acute graft-versus-host-disease (aGVHD) occurred in 9 and chronic (cGVHD) in 34 patients.