The recently published paper in the NEJM entitled “Survival Benefit with Kidney Transplants from HLA-Incompatible LiveDonors” caused a huge impact on Brazil’s media. Our main broadcast TV devoted few minutes explaining it, suggesting as a real breakthrough. Patients…
Transplant physicians face the challenge to detect allograft rejection using non-sensitive biomarkers and clinical signs/symptoms. For kidney transplant, serum creatinine, urinalysis for proteinuria or hematuria, are so far used for screening for rejection and/or assessment of graft function….
Eculizumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody (mAb) that binds the complement protein C5 blocking its cleavage into C5a and C5b, thereby preventing the formation of the C5b-9, the Membrane Attack Complex (MAC). Eculizumab is FDA approved for the…
A 24 year-old ESRD patient secondary to IgA nephropathy has been on HD for almost one year. His mother is a potential donor for living related kidney transplant. The condition seemed perfect—zero mismatch on HLA, no PRA, no…
Vascular rejection has been traditionally considered a severe form of acute rejection characterized by infiltration of mononuclear cells beneath the endothelium or by the presence of arteritis. Though initially reported as an aggressive form of T-cell mediated rejection…
It is surprising how high the nonadherence rates for immunosuppressants is among renal transplant recipients, ranging from 15 to 40%, despite the potential impact of nonadherence and the degree of education provided to transplant recipients. Nonadherence to immunosuppressive…
Acute humoral or antibody-mediated rejection (AMR) is attributed to the presence of alloantibodies against the graft, which could be either antibodies against human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) Class I and/or II , non-HLA antigens or endothelial antigens. Diagnosis of…
