There is good news for the >27,000 people around the world who donate a kidney each year. A study led by Dr. Amit Garg at Lawson Health Research Institute followed living kidney donors for ten years and found that they were at no greater risk for heart disease than the healthy general population. The study involved 2,028 Ontarians who donated a kidney between 1992 and 2009, and 20,280 healthy non-donors for comparison. “We manually reviewed the medical charts of over 2,000 living kidney donors in Ontario and linked this information to universal healthcare databases to reliably follow major cardiovascular events,” says Dr. Garg. Despite reduced kidney function in the donors, the researchers found that donors had a lower risk of death and heart disease compared to non-donors. According to an accompanying editorial by researchers at the University of Michigan, the study resolves the uncertainty that persists about the full extent of risks assumed by living kidney donors and makes an important contribution to our understanding of the long-term consequences of living kidney donation.
