Immunosuppressive therapies in kidney transplant recipients

The Fresenius Medical Care Foundation funded a survey recently published in the American Journal of Transplantation titled 
“Therapeutic needs in solid organ transplant recipients: The American Society of Transplantation patient survey.”

For more than two decades, the field of kidney transplantation has seen little advancement in immunosuppressive therapies. While current treatments are effective, there still exists a patient population with unmet needs who have a poor tolerance to these drugs. This survey was driven by a need for awareness of this challenge.

By partnering with transplant professionals across the world and engaging 10,000 transplant recipients, the survey found striking results. For example, 92% of patients reported having at least one side effect from current immunosuppressive therapies with most patients reporting side effects occurring daily.

In this Research in Brief, Benjamin Hippen, MD, Global Head of Clinical Affairs at Fresenius Medical Care, sits down with John Gill, MD, Professor of Medicine and Academic Head of Kidney Transplantation at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and David Taber, PharmD, Professor of Surgery and Director of Surgical Outcomes at Medical University of South Carolina, U.S., to dive deeper into these results.

Watch now: