Factors associated with kidney graft survival in pure antibody-mediated rejection at the time of indication biopsy: Importance of parenchymal injury but not disease activity

We studied the relative association of clinical, histologic, and molecular variables with risk of kidney transplant failure after an indication biopsy, both in all kidneys and in kidneys with pure antibody-mediated rejection (ABMR). From a prospective study of 1679 biopsies with histologic and molecular testing, we selected one random biopsy per patient (N = 1120), including 321 with pure molecular ABMR. Diagnoses were associated with actuarial survival differences but not good predictions. Therefore we concentrated on clinical (estimated GFR [eGFR], proteinuria, time posttransplant, donor-specific antibody [DSA]) and molecular and histologic features reflecting injury (acute kidney injury [AKI] and atrophy-fibrosis [chronic kidney disease (CKD)] and rejection. For all biopsies, univariate analysis found that failure was strongly associated with low eGFR, AKI, CKD, and glomerular deterioration, but not with rejection activity. In molecular ABMR, the findings were similar: Molecular and histologic activity and DSA were not important compared with injury. Survival in DSA-negative and DSA-positive molecular ABMR was similar. Multivariate survival analysis confirmed the dominance of molecular AKI, CKD, and eGFR. Thus, at indication biopsy, the dominant predictors of failure, both in all kidneys and in ABMR, were related to molecular AKI and CKD and to eGFR, not rejection activity, presumably because rejection confers risk via injury.

Automated summary

In this study, the focus was on clinical and molecular features of kidney transplant patients after indication biopsy to predict the risk of transplant failure. The results showed that factors such as estimated GFR, proteinuria, time posttransplant, donor-specific antibody, as well as molecular and histologic features reflecting injury were more important predictors of failure compared to rejection activity.