Highlights
- •aHUS patients are at great risk of disease relapse after kidney transplantation.
- •Preemptive plasma-therapy reduced the risk of disease relapse and improved graft survival.
- •Switch from plasma therapy to Eculizumab was necessary in 50% of patients.
Abstract
Background
Atypical hemolytic uremic syndrome (aHUS) frequently leads to renal failure, and kidney
transplantation bears a high risk of disease recurrence and graft loss.
Methods
Patients who received a kidney graft in our center were retrospectively identified
using our Vienna Thrombotic Microangiopathy Cohort. Since 2005, the majority of aHUS
patients received perioperative plasma exchange (PE) followed by plasma infusions
(PI). Patients were switched to eculizumab in case of plasma intolerance or failure.
Those with no preemptive therapy served as controls. We used proportional Cox regression
and logistic regression to examine predictors of graft survival.
Results
19 aHUS patients received 32 grafts and had a follow-up > 1 year. Eight patients received
preventive plasma therapy for eight transplants and 13 patients (including 2 patients
who received plasma therapy for their last transplant) had no preventive therapy for
24 grafts. The median graft survival was 2.372 days in patients, that received preemptive
therapy and 411 days in patients, that did not receive preemptive treatment (hazard
ratio: 0.11; p= 0.03). Four patients were switched to eculizumab because of plasma intolerance or
failure. Additionally, one patient, that was not transplanted according to the above-mentioned
protocol, received eculizumab for aHUS relapse. Additionally, relapse of aHUS (p = 0.01) and year of transplantation (p<0.01) had an effect on graft failure.
Conclusions
This study shows that preemptive plasma therapy and eculizumab rescue in selected
cases improve graft survival among kidney transplant recipients with aHUS.
Graphical abstract

Graphical Abstract
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 30, 2019
Accepted:
November 7,
2019
Received in revised form:
October 14,
2019
Received:
June 24,
2019
Identification
Copyright
© 2019 European Federation of Internal Medicine. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.