Pregnancy outcomes appear to be similar for women who undergo kidney transplants as children or adults, according to a study published online by JAMA Pediatrics.
Previous studies have reported pregnancy outcomes for women with transplants, regardless of age at transplantation, and it is unclear whether their findings apply to women who received transplants as children, according to Melanie L. Wyld, MD, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, New South Wales, Australia, and colleagues.
For the study, the researchers compared pregnancy outcomes for women who had kidney transplantation in childhood (<18 years of age; child-tx mothers) with women who had kidney transplantation in adulthood (≥18 years; adult-tx mothers). The study included all women with a functioning kidney transplant included in the Australia and New Zealand dialysis and transplant registry who had at least 1 pregnancy reported between 1963 and 2012.
The researchers identified a total of 101 pregnancies in 66 child-tx mothers and 626 pregnancies in 401 adult-tx mothers. At the time of pregnancy, the child-tx mothers were an average age of 25 and had a functioning transplant for 10 years, while adult-tx mothers were an average age of 31 with a functioning transplant for 6 years.
Results showed that live births resulted from 76% of pregnancies in child-tx mothers and 77% of pregnancies in adult-tx mothers. The incidence of premature babies (<37 weeks gestation) also was similar for child-tx mothers (45%) and adult-tx mothers (53%).
In addition, a similar proportion of preterm babies born to both sets of mothers were small for gestational age (22% for child-tx mothers and 10% for adult-tx mothers). Term babies born to child-tx and adult-tx mothers were frequently small for gestational age (57% vs 38%, respectively), both significantly more frequently than babies born at term in the general population.
“This work has shown that outcomes for child-tx mothers are similar to outcomes for adult-tx mothers and should provide comfort to such mothers and their physicians that their early onset of kidney failure and longer period of post-transplant exposure to immunosuppression do not adversely affect their pregnancy outcomes,” the authors concluded.
<h3>References</h3>
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