Before donating kidneys are transplanted to a new body, they benefit from supplemental oxygen. This has emerged from research by UZ Leuven, UMC Groningen and Oxford University. The researchers showed that kidneys that had been given oxygen shed much less a year after the transplant and survive more often.
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Is administering oxygen to a donor kidney beneficial for the organ? Previous research has already shown that oxygen deprivation is an important problem in transplants, researchers now also wanted to find an answer to this question.
The teams from the three universities checked this by giving the two kidneys from each donor to two different recipients: one kidney was given supplemental oxygen, the other was not. One year after the transplant, the recipient’s kidney function was measured by looking at how much blood the kidney could purify per minute.
What turned out? ‘When we looked at the kidneys that no longer functioned at all in that year and were therefore’ lost ‘or showed acute rejection symptoms, there was a difference,’ says Professor Ina Jochmans, transplant surgeon at UZ Leuven. “The relative risk of acute rejection was reduced by almost half in oxygenated kidneys, and kidney loss was greatly reduced.” If both kidneys from the same donor were still functioning well after one year, there was no significant difference in renal function between the two kidneys.
This is a big step forward for patients who need a kidney transplant, the researchers conclude.
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