The Framingham Risk Score Is Associated with Chronic Graft Failure in Renal Transplant Recipients

Abstract

Predicting chronic graft failure in renal transplant recipients (RTR) is an unmet clinical need. Chronic graft failure is often accompanied by transplant vasculopathy, the formation of de novo atherosclerosis in the transplanted kidney. Therefore, we determined whether the 10-year Framingham risk score (FRS), an established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease prediction module, is associated with chronic graft failure in RTR. In this prospective longitudinal study, 600 well-characterised RTR were followed for 10 years. The association with death-censored chronic graft failure (n = 81, 13.5%) was computed. An extended Cox model showed that each one percent increase of the FRS significantly increased the risk of chronic graft failure by 4% (HR: 1.04, p p = 0.014). Adding the FRS to eGFR resulted in a higher AUC in a receiver operating curve (AUC = 0.79, p p p < 0.001). These results suggest that a combination of the FRS and eGFR improves risk prediction. The easy to determine and widely available FRS has clinical potential to predict chronic graft failure in RTR.

Keywords

• Framingham risk score
• transplantation
• dyslipidaemia
• chronic graft failure
• kidney