Does diabetes impact therapeutic immunomodulation therapy decisions for kidney transplant recipients? Data from the Folic Acid for Vascular Outcome Reduction in Transplant (FAVORIT) trial

Larry A Weinrauch,1–4 John A D’Elia,2–4 Matthew R Weir,5 Suphamai Bunnapradist,6 Peter Finn,1 Jiankang Liu,1 Brian Claggett,1 Anthony P Monaco3,4 1Cardiovascular Division, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, 2Kidney and Hypertension Section,Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston, MA, 3Medicine and Surgery, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston MA, 4Harvard Medical School, Boston MA, 5University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, 6Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA Abstract: Although survival has improved for kidney transplant recipients over the past ­several decades, long-term survival in diabetic cohorts still is significantly less than that of non-diabetic cohorts. We hypothesized that among stable kidney transplant recipients, there might be differences between subgroups with and without diabetes with respect to prevalence of prior cardiovascular events and post-transplant antihypertensive and immunosuppressive therapy. We performed a post hoc analysis of participants in the Folic Acid for Vascular Outcome Reduction in Transplant (FAVORIT) trial, a multicenter international trial of 4110 prevalent kidney transplant recipients enrolled from 2002 to 2007 evaluating the effect of homocysteine-lowering vitamin therapy on cardiovascular outcomes. There were 2447 participants without diabetes, 166 with type 1 diabetes, and 1447 with type 2 diabetes at study entry, which occurred on average 4 years post-transplant. Recipients with diabetes had a greater prevalence of prior cardiovascular events, were more likely to have required multiple medications to control hypertension, and were more likely to have received tacrolimus as opposed to cyclosporine than the non-diabetic transplant recipients (all p