A Swiss study reported in The Lancet (July 5, 2008) evaluated the kidney transplant outcomes according to the gender of both donors and recipients. Under the direction of Gratwohl and colleagues, the study concluded that gender plays an important role in the success rate of kidney transplantation. Using data collected from the Collaborative Transplant Study database, a 195,000 deceased donor transplant registry, their study showed that the success rate was poorest for female organ recipients receiving a kidney from male donors, both in the short term (1 year) as well as the long term (2 to 10 years). The male donor–female recipient pairs that were studied had “poorer functional outcome, and progressive chronic interstitial damage and tubular microcalcifications, than same-sex donors and recipients.”
According to Gratwohl,
"Our multi-variable analysis showed that transplantation of kidneys from male donor into female recipients caused an increased rate of graft failure, which suggests an immunological H-Y effect in renal transplantation during the first year after transplantation that extends to 10 years of follow-up ... Consideration of sex should be integrated into future prospective analyses and decisions on organ allocation.”In addition, they found that being a female donor, regardless of the gender of the recipient, was associated with reduced outcomes. Similarly, corneal transplants between same-sex individuals had an 88% 2-year survival rate compared with only 77% for different sex transplants.
So does the weight of the evidence make sex a legitimate factor in deciding who gets what for organ transplants?
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