Kidney Transplant Outcomes in Amyloidosis: US National Database Study

We aimed to assess contemporary transplant outcomes among kidney recipients with amyloidosis, as the treatment and prognosis of amyloidosis have shown improvement over time.

Using the US Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network database, we initially evaluated the changes in patient and graft survival among kidney recipients with amyloidosis from 2002 to 2021. We then compared transplant outcomes between recipients with amyloidosis versus those with diabetic and nondiabetic causes of kidney failure, creating 1:4 matches with highly similar characteristics separately for deceased donor kidney transplant (DDKT) and living donor kidney transplant (LDKT) during the last decade (2012-2021).

We identified 643 kidney recipients with amyloidosis during 2002-2021. Patient and death-censored graft survival improved over time. In the matching analysis for 207 DDKT and 166 LDKT recipients with amyloidosis during 2012-2021, patient survival was not significantly different between amyloidosis and diabetes groups in both DDKT (log-rank, P  = 0.057) and LDKT ( P  = 0.99). Compared with the nondiabetes group, patient survival in the amyloidosis group was not significantly different for DDKTs ( P  = 0.56) but was significantly lower for LDKTs ( P  = 0.04). Death-censored graft failure risk was not significantly different between amyloidosis and diabetes or nondiabetes groups for both DDKTs ( P  = 0.78 and 0.75) and LDKTs ( P  = 0.40 and 0.24).

In this well-matched cohort study, we found no significant differences in patient and graft survival between kidney recipients with amyloidosis and those with diabetes. Similarly, these outcomes were not significantly different between those with amyloidosis versus nondiabetic causes, except for patient survival of LDKT recipients.