Pregnancy outcomes were similar for women who underwent kidney transplants in childhood and those who received transplants as adults, according to findings published Feb. 2 in JAMA Pediatrics.
Live births occurred in 76% of pregnancies in women who received kidney transplants as children, compared with 77% of pregnancies among women who received transplants as adults, wrote Melanie L. Wyld and her colleagues from Sydney Medical School in Australia.
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76% of women who received kidney transplants as children had successful pregnancies.
The study examined a total of 101 pregnancies in 66 women who received transplants before age 18 years, and 626 pregnancies in 401 women who were adults at the time of transplant.
Mean gestational age and prematurity incidence were also similar in the two groups, with child-transplant recipients having a mean gestational age of 35 weeks, and adult-transplant recipients having a mean gestational age of 36 weeks.
Incidence of prematurity was 45% in child-transplant mothers and 53% in adult-transplant mothers, the researchers reported.
“To our knowledge, this study is the first to look at pregnancy outcomes for women who received a kidney transplant as a child,” the researchers wrote. These results should “provide comfort to such mothers and their physicians that their early onset of kidney failure and longer period of posttransplant exposure to immunosuppression do not adversely affect their pregnancy outcomes,” they added.
Read the full article at: JAMA Pediatr. 2015;169(2):e143626. (doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2014.3626).