Jill Rollet , 2025-04-11 12:59:00
April 11, 2025
2 min read
Key takeaways:
- Male living kidney donors with normal blood pressure pre-donation had higher risk for kidney function decline vs. female donors.
- No difference in risk by sex was seen for donors with pre-donation hypertension.
BOSTON — Among living kidney donors with normal blood pressure, men were more likely than women to have worsening kidney function during the first 2 years after donation, according to study data.
Findings were presented at the National Kidney Foundation Spring Clinical Meetings.
“While hypertension is generally one of the major risk factors for worsening kidney function, it does not provide a synergistic effect on the association of gender with worsening kidney function after living kidney donation,” Ekamol Tantisattamo, MD, MPH, associate clinical professor of medicine in the division of nephrology, hypertension and kidney transplantation at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, told Healio.
Tantisattamo and colleagues analyzed data from the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network and the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients on 174,311 adults who donated a kidney between June 1972 and September 2022. Mean age of living donors was 41 years and 60% were women. Pre-donation BP data were available for 110,082 of the donors: 2,209 women and 1,645 men had hypertension. Donors had follow-up visits at or after the third month post-donation and at months 6, 12 and 24.
At a median of 6.67 months of follow-up, men were 17% more likely than women to experience a decline of at least 35% from pre-donation kidney function, after adjusting for certain demographics and pre-donation BMI, hypertension, BP, eGFR and proteinuria (HR = 1.17; 95% CI, 1.06-1.29).
Among living donors with normal pre-donation BP, men had a 19% higher risk for kidney function decline compared with women (HR = 1.19; 95% CI, 1.08-1.31). No difference in risk was observed between men and women with pre-donation hypertension.
“Since men are at higher risk for developing worsening kidney function after living kidney donation, factors contributing to differences between men and women should be considered as opportunities to mitigate the risk for worsening kidney function in male living kidney donors, particularly those with pre-donation normotension,” Tantisattamo said. “However, given there is no difference in the risk of developing worsening kidney function between men and women with pre-donation hypertension, selecting potential living kidney donor candidates with hypertension should not be based on gender.”
For more information:
Ekamol Tantisattamo, MD, MPH, can be reached at etantisa@hs.uci.edu.
Sources/Disclosures
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Tantisattamo E, et al. Abstract G-592. Presented at: NKF Spring Clinical Meetings; April 9-13, 2025; Boston.
Disclosures:
Tantisattamo reports no relevant financial disclosures.