Browsing by Author "Harhay, Meera N."

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    Operational challenges in the COVID‐19 era: Asymptomatic infections and vaccination timing
    (Wiley, 2021-11) Axelrod, David A.; Ince, Dilek; Harhay, Meera N.; Mannon, Roslyn B.; Alhamad, Tarek; Cooper, Matthew; Josephson, Michelle A.; Caliskan, Yasar; Sharfuddin, Asif; Kumar, Vineeta; Guenette, Alexis; Schnitzler, Mark A.; Ainapurapu, Sruthi; Lentine, Krista L.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created unprecedented challenges for solid organ transplant programs. While transplant activity has largely recovered, appropriate management of deceased donor candidates who are asymptomatic but have positive nucleic acid test (NAT) for COVID-19 is unclear as this may reflect active infection or prolonged viral shedding. Furthermore, candidates who are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated continue to receive donor offers. In the absence of prospective data, transplant professionals at U.S. adult kidney transplant centers were surveyed to determine community practice (N: 92 centers, capturing 40.8% of centers and 56.6% of transplants performed). The majority (96.8%) of responding centers declined organs for asymptomatic NAT+ patients without documented prior infection. However, 31.6% of centers proceeded with kidney transplant in NAT+ patients who were at least 30 days from initial diagnosis with negative chest imaging. Less than 7% of programs reported inactivating patients who were unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. In conclusion, despite national recommendations to wait for negative testing, many centers are proceeding with transplant in patients with positive tests due to presumed viral shedding. Furthermore, very few centers are requiring COVID-19 vaccination prior to transplantation despite early evidence suggesting reduced immunogenicity in transplant patients on immunosuppression.
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    Uromodulin to Osteopontin Ratio in Deceased Donor Urine Is Associated With Kidney Graft Outcomes
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2021) Mansour, Sherry G.; Liu, Caroline; Jia, Yaqi; Reese, Peter P.; Hall, Isaac E.; El-Achkar, Tarek M.; LaFavers, Kaice A.; Obeid, Wassim; Rosenberg, Avi Z.; Daneshpajouhnejad, Parnaz; Doshi, Mona D.; Akalin, Enver; Bromberg, Jonathan S.; Harhay, Meera N.; Mohan, Sumit; Muthukumar, Thangamani; Schröppel, Bernd; Singh, Pooja; El-Khoury, Joe M.; Weng, Francis L.; Thiessen-Philbrook, Heather R.; Parikh, Chirag R.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    Background: Deceased-donor kidneys experience extensive injury, activating adaptive and maladaptive pathways therefore impacting graft function. We evaluated urinary donor uromodulin (UMOD) and osteopontin (OPN) in recipient graft outcomes. Methods: Primary outcomes: all-cause graft failure (GF) and death-censored GF (dcGF). Secondary outcomes: delayed graft function (DGF) and 6-month estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). We randomly divided our cohort of deceased donors and recipients into training and test datasets. We internally validated associations between donor urine UMOD and OPN at time of procurement, with our primary outcomes. The direction of association between biomarkers and GF contrasted. Subsequently, we evaluated UMOD:OPN ratio with all outcomes. To understand these mechanisms, we examined the effect of UMOD on expression of major histocompatibility complex II in mouse macrophages. Results: Doubling of UMOD increased dcGF risk (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.1; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02-1.2), whereas OPN decreased dcGF risk (aHR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.88-1). UMOD:OPN ratio ≤3 strengthened the association, with reduced dcGF risk (aHR, 0.57; 0.41-0.80) with similar associations for GF, and in the test dataset. A ratio ≤3 was also associated with lower DGF (aOR, 0.73; 95% CI, 0.60-0.89) and higher 6-month eGFR (adjusted β coefficient, 3.19; 95% CI, 1.28-5.11). UMOD increased major histocompatibility complex II expression elucidating a possible mechanism behind UMOD's association with GF. Conclusions: UMOD:OPN ratio ≤3 was protective, with lower risk of DGF, higher 6-month eGFR, and improved graft survival. This ratio may supplement existing strategies for evaluating kidney quality and allocation decisions regarding deceased-donor kidney transplantation.