Comparison of demographic data and immunosupression protocol in patients with and without malignancy after kidney transplantation

Long-term immunosuppressive therapy after renal transplantation increases the risk of developing malignancy. The aim of this study was to determine the demographic parameters and immunosupression protocol in kidney transplant recipients with and without malignancy. This case-control study was undertaken on 12 renal transplant recipients with malignancy and 48 with­out malignancy at The Shahid Beheshti Kidney Transplantation Center in Babol (north of Iran). Data including age, gender, number of anti-rejection therapies and immunosupression regimen were recorded and analyzed with SPSS and Mann-Whitney Fisher's exact t-test. P value < 0.05 was considered significant. The prevalence of malignancy in 380 renal allograft recipients was 3.15% during six years of follow-up. The malignancies noted after renal transplantation included: Kaposi's sarcoma (n = 5), lymphoma (n = 3), cutaneous basal cell carcinoma (n = 2), cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (n = 1) and brain tumor (n = 1). Age of patients at the time of trans­plantation, duration of immunosupression treatment and number of anti-rejection therapies were not significantly different in patients with and without malignancy (P > 0.05). Males were signi­ficantly more affected with malignancy compared to females (P < 0.05). Our study shows that there was no significant correlation between age at transplantation, duration of immunosupression treatment and number of anti-rejection therapies and occurrence of post-renal transplantation malignancy; however, the prevalence of malignancy was significantly higher in male patients. The most common malignancy seen was Kaposi's sarcoma followed by lymphoma.