Patients with kidney failure who receive a kidney transplant, including those with sickle cell disease, have lower mortality, according to a study published online in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. Researchers studied all adults with kidney failure who began maintenance dialysis or were added to the kidney transplant wait list in 1998-2017. The absolute risk difference and hazard ratio (HR) for mortality were measured in matched pairs of transplant recipients versus wait-listed candidates in groups of patients with kidney failure associated with sickle cell disease and kidney failure due to other etiologies (controls). The researchers found that 189 sickle cell and 220,251 control transplant recipients showed significantly lower mortality compared with their matched wait-listed candidates. At 10- year posttransplant, the absolute risk differences were 20.3% and 19.8% in the sickle cell and control groups, respectively. The sickle cell and control groups had similar HRs (0.57 and 0.54, respectively). However, compared with controls, the sickle cell group was less likely to receive transplantation (sub-distribution HR, 0.73). Among wait-listed candidates, similar disparities were observed (sub-distribution HR, 0.62).
