The national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), operated under federal contract by United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), will soon perform the first match run of a national pilot program to facilitate kidney paired donation (KPD) transplants. The match run is intended to identify medically compatible pairs of potential living kidney donors and candidates, in cases where the potential donor was not able to match with his or her original intended recipient.

A total of 77 living kidney donor transplant programs will participate in the initial pilot phase. Each program is affiliated with one of four coordinating centers, which will work directly with UNOS on administrative issues such as donor/recipient applications, logistical arrangements and data submission. Match runs will be conducted every four to five weeks with information on potential living donors and candidates supplied by participating transplant programs. Each transplant program must document that potential donors have completed a rigorous medical screening and evaluation process, and that they have provided detailed informed consent for donation and for potential participation in a national match run.

A simple, inexpensive blood test could soon help doctors stop organ rejection before it damages transplanted hearts and kidneys. In the past, rejection episodes couldn't be spotted until they harmed the organ. Researchers have found three easily measured proteins that rise in the blood during acute rejection, in which a patient's immune system attacks his or her transplanted organ.

The new blood test avoids the invasive, expensive, slow system now used to keep tabs on transplants. Currently, all organ recipients receive functional monitoring of their new body parts. If organ function drops, doctors cut a tiny sample from the transplanted tissue to check for rejection, and then adjust patients' immune-suppressing drugs accordingly. About 25 percent of kidney recipients experience an episode of acute rejection in the first year after transplant.

The new blood test will let doctors skip directly to drug dosing before a transplant is damaged. As well as treating rejection early, doctors could use the test to reduce doses of immune-suppressing drugs for patients whose bodies are handling their transplanted organs well, thus reducing unnecessary drug side effects.

The award recipient is honored at the AAKP Medal of Excellence Award Dinner held Friday, March 18, 2011 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the Renal Physicians Association's Annual Meeting. Nomination forms can be downloaded by visiting the AAKP website. Nominations must be postmarked by Friday, November 5, 2010 to be considered. For more information about the 2011 AAKP Medal of Excellence Award contact Jerome Bailey, Special Projects Director, at (800) 749-2257.

Older age, female gender, and delayed graft function are among the independent risk factors for recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) among renal transplant recipients, according to a new study. The risk for future UTIs also is increased if the first UTI is caused by a multidrug-resistant pathogen. The risk for recurrent UTIs increased by 2 percent for each year of age. Female patients had a 1.8 times increased risk compared with male patients. Delayed graft function, hepatitis C virus infection, and polycystic kidney disease as a cause of transplantation each was associated with a twofold-increased risk of recurrent UTIs. 

UTIs are the most common infectious complication in renal transplant recipients with most UTIs occuring within 12 months of transplantation. Renal transplant recipients have higher rates of UTIs, hospitalizations, and deaths compared to patients on renal transplant waiting lists. The findings are important because they point to ways of reducing the rates of recurrent urinary tract infections in renal transplant patients including removing the urinary catheter as soon as possible and trying to reduce antibiotic use as much as possible. Another preventive strategy may be to discharge renal transplant patients from the hospital as soon as possible.