Organ Transplant Recipients Face Serious KidneyFailure Risk, University of Michigan Study Finds.

(From AScribe)

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- As if the ordeal of waiting for, receiving and living with an organ transplant weren't enough, a new study finds that people who get a second chance at life from new hearts, lungs, livers or intestines are very likely to have their lives cut short by failing kidneys.

In fact, 16.5 percent of all non-kidney transplant recipients develop chronic kidney failure, and almost a third of those patients go on to develop full-blown end-stage renal disease, according to new data published in the New England Journal of Medicine by researchers from the University of Michigan Health System.

And those whose kidneys begin to fail after their transplant face a much larger risk of dying than those whose kidneys stay healthy, the study finds. Only a second transplant - to put in a new kidney - mitigates the fatal consequences of ESRD.

The researchers weren't able to pinpoint the exact causes of the kidney failure seen in the study of 69,321 people who received transplants of any solid organ except kidney or pancreas between 1990 and 2000. But in the largest-ever study of its kind, they identified several factors that put patients at a higher risk of kidney failure and death: older age; being a woman; pre-transplant hepatitis C infection, high blood pressure or diabetes; and kidney problems before or immediately after transplant.…