Immunosuppression-Free Life after Pediatric Liver Transplant: A Case-Control Study from the Society of Pediatric Liver Transplant (SPLIT) Registry.

Objective: To compare long-term outcomes of pediatric liver transplant (LT) recipients off immunosuppression (IS) with matched controls on IS using data from the Society of Pediatric Liver Transplant (SPLIT) registry.
Study Design: This was a retrospective case-control study. SPLIT participants <18 years of age, ≥4 years after isolated LT, and off IS for ≥1 year (cases) were age- and sex-matched 1:2 to patients with the same primary diagnosis and post-LT follow-up duration (controls). Primary outcomes included retransplantation, allograft rejection, IS comorbidities, and prevalence of SPLIT-derived composite ideal outcome (c-IO) achieved at the end of the follow-up period. Differences were compared using multiple linear regression for continuous outcomes and logistic regression for dichotomous data.
Results: The study cohort was composed of 33 cases (42.4% male, 60.6% biliary atresia, median age at LT of 0.7 [P25, P75, 0.5, 1.6] years, median IS withdrawal time of 9 [P25, P75, 6, 12] years after LT) and 66 age- and sex-matched controls. No cases required retransplantation. Cases and controls had similar growth parameters, laboratory values, calculated glomerular filtration rates, rates of post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease, graft rejection, and attainment of c-IO.
Conclusions: No differences in allograft rejection rates, IS complications, or c-IO prevalence were seen between SPLIT patients off IS and age- and sex-matched controls remaining on IS. Discontinuation of IS most commonly occurred in the context of rigorously designed IS withdrawal trials. The available sample size was small, affecting generalizability to the broader pediatric LT population.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest A research innovation grant from The Canadian Donation and Transplantation Research Program (CDTRP) and the Ashley's Angels Fund supported this work. S.K. is the recipient of the 2021-2022 Canadian Association for Study of the Liver – Canadian Liver Foundation (CASL-CLF) Clinical Hepatology Fellowship, which supported this work. S.K. was the recipient of a SPLIT 2022 Travel Grant for the presentation of this work. The current study design, data analysis, and interpretation, with writing and completion of the manuscript were entirely investigator initiated. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
(Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Inc.)