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Abstract
Background and objectives Panel reactive antibody informs the likelihood of finding an HLA-compatible donor for transplant candidates, but has historically been associated with acute rejection and allograft survival because testing methods could not exclude the presence of concomitant donor-specific antibodies. Despite new methods to exclude donor-specific antibodies, panel reactive antibody continues to be used to determine the choice of induction and maintenance immunosuppression. The study objective was to determine the clinical relevance of panel reactive antibody in the absence of donor-specific antibodies.
Design, setting, participants, & measurements Retrospective observational study of kidney allograft survival among 4058 zero HLA-A–, B-, DR-, and DQB1-mismatched transplant recipients without antibodies to donor kidney antigens encoded by these HLA gene loci.
Results Among 4058 first and repeat transplant recipients, patients with calculated panel reactive antibody (cPRA) 1%–97% were not at higher risk of transplant failure, compared with patients with cPRA of 0% (death censored graft loss: hazard ratio, 1.07; 95% confidence interval, 0.82 to 1.41). Patients with cPRA ≥98% had a higher risk of graft loss from any cause including death (hazard ratio, 1.39; 95% confidence interval, 1.08 to 1.79) and death censored allograft failure (hazard ratio, 1.78; 95% confidence interval, 1.27 to 2.49). In stratified analyses, the higher risk of graft loss among patients with cPRA ≥98% was only observed among repeat, but not first, transplant recipients. In subgroup analysis, there was no association between cPRA and graft loss among living related transplant recipients.
Conclusions Calculated panel reactive antibody is poorly associated with post-transplant immune reactivity to the allograft in the absence of donor-specific antibody.
Podcast This article contains a podcast at https://www.asn-online.org/media/podcast/CJASN/2021_01_25_CJN13640820_final.mp3
- Received August 19, 2020.
- Accepted December 16, 2020.
- Copyright © 2021 by the American Society of Nephrology
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