An article from the journalist Javier Gracia (jagra@ono.com) -
According to the data of a Spanish multi-centre study including more than 2,000 patients, approximately 60% of kidney-transplanted patients suffer from or have suffered from anaemia at some time in their evolution.

Given the importance of good control of anaemia in these kinds of patients, Dr. Josep Grinyó, the head of the Nephrology service of Bellvitge University Hospital in Barcelona, and Dr Iain C. MacDougall of the Department of Renal Medicine of King’s College Hospital in London have co-ordinated the book ‘Anaemia in Transplantation’, which forms part of the International Transplantation Updates collection published by Permanyer Publications.

The book has 113 pages, with contributions from over 20 nephrology specialists from around the world, dealing with the main causes of anaemia in transplanted patients and the treatment to be followed.

Dr. Grinyó believes that anaemia, “understood in the context of transplanted patients, involves serious complications that must generate a diagnostic and therapeutic alert in the clinic, and may appear for innumerable reasons, either due to a lack of iron, loss of blood, graft dysfunction causing deficient erythropoietin synthesis or the immunosuppressors might have a myelo depressor effect“.

Throughout the presentation of the book, Josep Grinyó assured that the disturbance associated with anaemia has left much evidence in the literature, and that it is a clear marker of reduced renal function and a decrease in the survival of the graft and the patient themselves in the long term. “As a general rule”, confirms Grinyó, “greater attention is usually paid to the immunological response of the transplanted patient, that is, more effort is made in analysing the reasons for the rejection of the organ, insisting less on controlling other aspects of the kidney transplant related to the co morbidities given in other kidney insufficiencies, such as those found in dialysis”, which he believes is a big mistake.

In the same event, Dr. Arias  wished to stress that “this kind of anaemia has an effective treatment. The striking thing is that as a general rule patients are given treatment with erythropoietin later than in other non-transplanted patients”, which is rather inexplicable as current treatments with erythropoietins are giving very good.

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