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Transplant specialists, when evaluating kidneys that come from donors, try to work out how likely it is that the kidney will fail after being transplanted into a recipient. Their risk calculations consider factors including the donor’s age, height, weight and history of diabetes. And, to the dismay of some researchers, it also includes the donor’s race.
Kidneys from deceased Black donors are automatically downgraded as higher risk.
Some experts are now asking if there is a better way of evaluating kidneys from Black donors, one that can rely more on genetic screening rather than race to assess the risk of failure.
The proposed genetic screening would check whether donors carry two copies of variants in a gene, APOL1, that are strongly associated with kidney disease. Because most Black donors do not have those genetic variants, the experts argue, their kidneys should not be automatically downgraded.
But before instituting that change, researchers say they have to determine if, in fact, kidneys from donors that have the risk variants of APOL1 are more likely to fail.
The first hint came from ...