Study provides insights into how the immune system of kidney transplant recipients responds to COVID-19

Kidney transplant recipients (KTRs) have experienced severe symptoms and poor outcomes with COVID-19. Because the long-term antirejection immunosuppressive drugs that KTRs take could inhibit the development of protective anti-COVID-19 immunity, most hospitals have reduced the drugs’ doses in KTRs with COVID-19. Surprisingly, reported rates of acute rejection have been low despite reduced immunosuppression in these patients. A new study in JASN provides a potential explanation.

To study KTRs’ immune responses in the face of COVID-19, a team lead by Madhav C. Menon, MBBS, MD (Yale University School of Medicine and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai) analyzed the blood of 64 KTRs with COVID-19, including 31 acute cases (< 4 weeks from diagnosis) and 33 post-acute cases (>4 weeks). Patients were enrolled form Mount Sinai and Montefiore hospital (Albert Einstein College of Medicine)—two hospitals at the forefront of the pandemic in its early months. Read the full story in Medical Xpress.