Incidence and risk factors of clinical characteristics, tacrolimus pharmacokinetics, and related genomic polymorphisms for posttransplant diabetes mellitus in the early stage of renal transplant recipients.

PURPOSE

Posttransplant diabetes mellitus (PTDM) is an important complication in a tacrolimus (TAC)-based immunosuppressive regimen. The present study investigated the incidence, clinical risk factors, TAC pharmacokinetics (PK), and genomic polymorphisms related to TAC-PK or diabetes mellitus (DM) under the TAC-based immunosuppressive protocol.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

Seventy-one nondiabetic renal allograft recipients transplanted from February 1998 to March 2004 were studied. Patients with over 6.5 mg/dL of hemoglobin A1c on sequential blood samples or requiring insulin or oral antidiabetic agents around 6 months after transplantation were diagnosed as having PTDM.

RESULTS

Six months after transplantation, 10 recipients (14.1%) developed PTDM. The positive risk factors were age (P = .003) and body mass index (P = .035). There were no significant differences in gender distribution, pretransplant dialysis period, dialysis modality, acute rejection rate, total steroid doses, TAC-PK, or its related genomic polymorphisms between the two groups. In the DM-related polymorphisms, the frequency of PTDM was significant higher in patients with the VDR TaqI tt or Tt genotype than in those with the TT genotype (P = .013). After a multivariate analysis, age over 50 years (P = .007, odds ratio 8.92) and the presence of VDR TaqI t allele (P = .043, odds ratio 6.71) were correlated with the development of PTDM.

CONCLUSION

The incidence of PTDM in our series was 14.1%. Age over 50 years was a risk factor. The presence of VDR TaqI t allele might be a risk for PTDM. An association between TAC-PK and development of PTDM was not observed.