Covid-19 in kidney transplant recipients with immunosuppressive therapy

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, various treatments have been frequently reported for patients infected with this virus, especially in transplant patients/recipients. Objective: Investigating of kidney transplant patients under immunosuppressive therapy infected with COVID-19 can pave the way to understanding, handling, and treatment of COVID-19.

We had a brief review of the literature on immunosuppressive therapy in kidney transplants infected with COVID-19. This was based on the PubMed Database with keywords "kidney, transplant, COVID-19, and immunosuppress" after hospitalization of kidney transplantation infected with COVID-19. He had already been recorded in the Organ Transplant Registry (ID≠ 64510) of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences /Iran.

We reported the clinical course of a 45-year-old man with a history of kidney transplantation and immunotherapy who was infected with COVID-19 with respiratory infections and positive RT-PCR (Real-time polymerase chain reaction). He was treated with hydroxychloroquine, Kaletra, CellCept, and prednisolone for 5 days, and finally discharged from the hospital. In addition, reviewing of 47 papers with 851 samples showed that immunosuppressant medications alone could be a therapeutic choice in kidney transplants infected with COVID-19 with careful management.

Patients with organ transplantation infected with COVID-19 may show different clinical signs, clinical course, and prognosis due to underlying diseases and the use of immunosuppressant medications. It might be best to continue taking the immunosuppressant medications but modify them based on the patients' conditions such as clinical symptoms, laboratory results, paraclinical examinations.