HLA matching and death with a functioning graft

An analysis just produced by the Collaborative Transplant Study (CTS) (Newsletter 3; 2012) examined the most frequent cause of death in relation to HLA compatibility in the first 3 years after renal transplantation. The most frequent causes of death were infection (27%), cardiovascular disease (30%) and cancer (8%).

It appeared that there were more deaths due to infection and also due to cardiovascular disease in patients receiving less well matched kidneys. However death from cancer did not appear to be related to HLA matching, at least in this first 3 years. Thus death with a functioning graft is perhaps now an additional adverse event associated with the HLA mismatched kidney.