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Low Bacterial Diversity in Lungs Linked to Worse CF Outcomes

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Absence of a dominant genus, more diversity indicative of better lung function

People with cystic fibrosis (CF) and advanced lung disease who have bacterial communities dominated by just one type of bacteria have a higher risk of lung transplant or death than those with more diverse communities, a study reports.

The risk of needing a lung transplant or death was increased by 80% in patients with low bacterial diversity, compared with those without a dominant genus — a median survival without needing a lung transplant of 1.6 years versus 2.9 years. Read more in Cystic Fibrosis News Today.

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Total CVD deaths during early period of pandemic highest since 2003

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Heart disease remained among the leading causes of death, even amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have exacerbated preexisting CVD morbidity-related racial/ethnic disparities, researchers reported.

In 2020, more than 3.3 million deaths were registered in the U.S., which exceeded the 2019 figure by more than 500,000 deaths, according to the American Heart Association’s annual Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics update. Read more in Healio.

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CHOP Develops Error-Reduction Tool for Stem Cell Transplant Reporting

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A newly developed tool significantly improves the accuracy of reported hematopoietic stem cell transplant engraftments.

January 25, 2023 – Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed an application to automate the determination of engraftment, a key outcome after hematopoietic stem cell transplants.

The tool, described in a recent study published in Transplantation and Cellular Therapy, was designed by hematopoietic cell transplant and informatics experts at CHOP to help improve transplant outcomes reporting. According to the press release, the standard method to reduce errors in these reports is a tedious, manual process that is not always effective. Read more in Health IT Analytics.

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Kidney Transplant Recipients Do Not Benefit From Infliximab Induction

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Infliximab induction therapy fails to protect kidney transplants and appears to increase the risk of BK virus infection in recipients, investigators report.

Peter Heeger, MD, of the Comprehensive Transplant Center at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood, California, and colleagues randomly assigned 225 unsensitized recipients of deceased-donor kidneys to receive intravenous infliximab (3 mg/kg) or saline placebo prior to kidney reperfusion. Read the full story in Renal & Urology News.

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Widely used test kept Black people from getting kidney transplants sooner. Now that’s changing.

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Kristal Higgins just wants to be healthy, become a nurse and travel to Greece. But she has kidney failure and has been on a transplant waiting list for six years. 

The disease and its comorbidities have touched many of her loved ones. Her mother has stage 2 kidney disease. Her father is diabetic, a risk factor for kidney failure, as was her late grandmother. Several of her relatives have kidney failure. Read more in USA Today.

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Kidney Transplant Outcomes in Recipients Over the Age of 70

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Published: January 20, 2023 (see history)

Cite this article as: Mehta J, Ndubueze O, Tatum D, et al. (January 20, 2023) Kidney Transplant Outcomes in Recipients Over the Age of 70. Cureus 15(1): e34021. doi:10.7759/cureus.34021

Abstract

Background: Patients older than 70 years are the fastest-growing age group of patients requiring renal replacement therapy. This has resulted in a corresponding increase in the number of elderly transplant recipients. We hypothesized that graft survival in this population would be comparable to that seen in the literature on kidney transplant recipients under 70 years of age. Read the complete abstract in Cureus.

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Neurological effects of long COVID: It is ‘not only a respiratory disease’

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As the world continues to grapple with effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, individuals around the globe are still dealing with symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 infection for months, even years, after their initial infection.

Post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, more commonly referred to as long COVID, are defined by the CDC as a wide range of new, returning or ongoing health issues that people experience after being infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Read more from Healio.

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