Covid-19 and Kidney Transplantation
Review of 36 patients at a single US institution found that kidney-transplant recipients with Covid-19 had less fever as an initial symptom, lower CD3, CD4, and CD8 cell counts, and more rapid clinical progression than persons with Covid-19 in the general population.
Source:
New England Journal of Medicine
SPS commentary:
Authors also highlight that the number of patients with very low CD3, CD4, and CD8 cell counts indirectly supports the need to decrease doses of immunosuppressive agents in patients with Covid-19, especially in those who have recently received antithymocyte globulin, which decreases all T-cell subsets for many weeks. The results also show a very high early mortality among kidney-transplant recipients with Covid-19 — 28% at 3 weeks as compared with the reported 1% to 5% mortality among patients with Covid-19 in the general population.