Favorable Renal Allograft and Patient Outcome after Transplantation in Patients with Diabetes Mellitus: A Five-Year Single Center Experience

Background: Diabetic patients are increasing rapidly worldwide and kidney transplantation is generally accepted as a treatment of choice in these patients with end stage kidney disease. Objectives: We made a plan to evaluate the 5-year outcome of kidney transplantation in patients with and without DM. Patients and Methods: Two groups of adult kidney recipients including 117 with history of DM mellitus (DM) and 135 non- DM mellitus between March 2006 and September 2009, were enrolled in this study. The clinical information was retrieved from both paper records and electronic databases and additional details were obtained from phone call. Results: From total of 252 recipients, 182 received kidney from living donors (11% living related and 89% living unrelated) and 70 from deceased donors. Renal function was preserved among the diabetic patients same as the non-diabetic cases (median serum creatinine 1.35 mg/ dL versus 1.30 mg/ dL, P = 0.8). Triglyceride (P = 0.000), cholesterol (P = 0.000) and uric acid levels (P = 0.004) were significantly higher in patients with DM. In addition, no significant differences were seen between two groups in terms of graft survivals at univariate and multivariate analyses. There was no significant difference in patient survival between recipients with and without DM (log-rank, P = 0.2). Multivariate analysis by Cox regression showed that the age and gender of recipient, donor source and DM had no adverse effect on mid-term outcome among our patients. Conclusions: Diabetic and non-diabetic kidney transplant recipients had similar shortand mid-term graft and patient survivals.