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Untitled - Roche Trasplantes

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BIOPSIA DE PROTOCOLO EN EL TRASPLANTE RENAL<br />

progression of disease and therapy designed to remove the aetiological agents would<br />

have to be effective to justify the intervention.<br />

The options available for prevention of graft damage are: treatment of subclinical rejection;<br />

reversal of and prevention of further CNI nephrotoxicity, especially arteriolar hyalinosis;<br />

prevention of ischaemia and selection of a younger donor. The latter strategies will<br />

not help after the transplant but there is evidence that treatment of subclinical rejection<br />

and switch from CNI based immunosuppression can make a difference.<br />

Treatment of subclinical rejection<br />

The diagnosis of subclinical rejection and the repeated and reliable demonstration of a<br />

correlation between subclinical cellular infiltrates and subsequent graft fibrosis, does<br />

not prove that it is possible to treat subclinical rejection with benefit. It was thus important<br />

to see proof of this hypothesis in a single centre study from Canada (26). In this<br />

study Rush and his colleagues randomised half of the patients to protocol biopsy and<br />

treatment of subclinical rejection and the other half to treatment based upon clinical indices<br />

only. Interstitial fibrosis and tubular atrophy scores on biopsy at six months and<br />

serum creatinine at 24 months were statistically significantly superior in the protocol<br />

biopsy group, thus proving the hypothesis. In our own series, published recently, it was<br />

demonstrated that treatment of subclinical rejection diagnosed on one month protocol<br />

biopsy, eliminated differences in chronic fibrosis and tubular atrophy at three months,<br />

between those with and without subclinical rejection at one month (50). While this cohort<br />

study again does not constitute formal proof of the utility of treating subclinical rejection,<br />

it is encouraging that this therapy did seem to eliminate chronic damage which<br />

we have otherwise seen consistently for the past 15 or more years. A more recent formal<br />

trial by the Canadian group with a number of other North American centres has been<br />

reported in abstract form in 2006, but failed to demonstrate an impact because of the<br />

low incidence of subclinical rejection when using immunosuppression based upon tacrolimus<br />

and mycophenloate mofetil (27). Interestingly there was a higher than expected<br />

level of interstitial fibrosis in that study –perhaps exchanging subclinical rejection for<br />

CNI nephrotoxicity.<br />

In conclusion, the weight of evidence favours the diagnosis and treatment of subclinical<br />

rejection, especially when using lower intensity immunosuppressive regimens, as a strategy<br />

for reducing chronic allograft nephropathy.<br />

Avoidance of CNI nephrotoxicity<br />

One strategy for avoidance of nephrotoxicity is to avoid these agents entirely and a<br />

number of studies have attempted to do that by using combinations of sirolimus or everolimus<br />

with mycophenolate mofetil and steroids with induction using a monoclonal<br />

24

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