Background: Henoch-Schönlein nephritis (HSN) is a rare condition resulting in end-stage renal disease. Therefore, graft outcomes and recurrence rates after transplantation are not well studied. Also, the effect of donor type on graft outcome has not been evaluated thoroughly.
Methods: The graft outcome and recurrence rate in 20 kidney recipients with HSN were compared with age-, sex-, and donor source-matched controls (control A, primary immunoglobulin A nephropathy; control B, other causes; 40 recipients per group). To assess the effect of donor type, we pooled our data with two previous cohort studies where donor type had been described in detail.
Results: Overall graft survival rates were 87.7% at 10 years. The overall recurrence rate of HSN was 15.4% over 10 years. Graft survival and recurrence rates in the HSN group were similar to those of control A and control B. The pooled data showed a 29.4% incidence rate for recurrent HSN. Living related donor transplantation showed a trend of higher recurrence compared with recipients with nonrelated grafts, although it was marginally significant (P=0.059). However, the graft survival rate in related-donor recipients was not inferior to that in the unrelated-donor recipients.
Conclusions: Long-term graft survival and recurrence rates in kidney recipients with HSN were comparable to those of recipients with primary immunoglobulin A nephropathy. The type of donor did not significantly affect long-term graft survival.