Declining Influence of Race on the Outcome of Living-Donor Renal Transplantation

A racial disparity in graft survival for renal transplant recipients has been documented for both cadaveric and living-donor transplants. In the present single-center study we analyzed graft survival by race for recipients of living-donor kidney transplants in three eras: 1985–89, 1990–94, and 1995–2000. There was an intensification of the immunosuppressant regimen beginning in 1996, such that all patients received cyclosporine or tacrolimus with mycophenolate and prednisone. Graft survival was analyzed using the Cox proportional hazards model. There were 79 black recipients and 210 white recipients with no difference in mean age, degree of HLA matching, or proportion of recipients with diabetes as the cause of end-stage renal disease. Using all data from 1985 to 2000, graft survival was significantly better for whites vs. blacks adjusted for age, gender, diabetes, era of the transplant, and haplotype match (p = 0.05). However, when analyzed by era, there was a temporal trend for a progressive decrease in the racial disparity in graft survival. In confirmation of this effect, there was a significant race–era interaction (p = 0.01) on multivariable Cox proportional hazards analysis. The most recent data from the United States Renal Data System (USRDS) show a similar decrease in the racial difference in 1-year graft survival. We conclude that the influence of race on living-donor graft survival is diminishing over time.