RESEARCH ARTICLE


Infection and Bronchiolitis Obliterans Among Native American Lung Transplant Recipients



Amrita Dosanjh1, *, James Koziol2
1 UCSD School of Medicine, La Jolla, CA, USA
2 The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2008
Volume: 2
First Page: 23
Last Page: 26
Publisher Id: TOIDJ-2-23
DOI: 10.2174/1874279300802010023

Article History:

Received Date: 07/08/2008
Revision Received Date: 29/08/2008
Acceptance Date: 01/09/2008
Electronic publication date: 24/10/2008
Collection year: 2008

© 2008 Dosanjh et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the UCSD School of Medicine, San Diego, CA 92122, USA. E-mail: adosanjh@ucsd.edu


Abstract

Background:

Alaska Native and Native American populations (AN/NA) are prone to respiratory tract infections, due to genetic predisposition and environmental factors. Since community acquired respiratory tract infections are associated with higher rates of bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS), it was hypothesized that AN/NA lung transplant recipients may experience a higher rate of BOS.

Methods:

The UNOS database was searched from 1995-2005 to identify adult AN/NA patients undergoing lung transplantation in the U.S. Among 11,103 patients, 33 AN/NA (13M/20F) patients were identified for further analysis. Among this population rates of: i) initial hospital stay, ii) first year hospitalizations, iii) hospitalization for infection, iv) subsequent BOS in years 1-5, were compared. Statistical analysis was performed using the fisher exact test, and a p value of <0.05 was considered significant.

Results:

AN/NA recipients did not have a higher incidence of BOS in years 1-5 following lung transplantation. They did have a higher rate of first year complications, reflected by higher hospitalization rates. AN/NA patients had a higher rate of first year hospitalizations for non-CMV infection (p < 0.03).

Conclusions:

AN/NA patients despite being at risk for community acquired respiratory infections did not have a higher rate of transplantation BOS in subsequent years.