Long term follow-up of SARS-CoV-2 recovered renal transplant recipients: A single-centre experience from India.

INTRODUCTION: Follow-up studies of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in kidney transplant recipients (KTR) are scarcely reported. METHODS: We studied 142 hospitalized KTR for a median (interquartile range) follow-up of 9(8-11) months who recovered from SARS-CoV-2 during May 2020 to Dec 2020.The outcomes were to assess persistent symptoms post-discharge; EuroQoL visual analogue score (EQ-VAS); EuroQoL 5-dimension score (E5-QD-5L) score and modified medical research Dyspnea score (mMRC) at 1-month, 3-month and beyond 6 months. Graft outcome was also analysed. RESULTS: The age of the cohort was 43(34-69) years and COVID-19 severity ranged from asymptomatic (4%), mild (50%), moderate (35%) to severe (12%). The most common persistent symptom was fatigue which significantly decreased in the follow-up (n = 45(32.3) vs 10(7.4) vs 4(2.9; p-value = 0.001) at 1-month 3-month and beyond 6 months respectively. Decrement in the mean (standard deviation) EQ-VAS score from baseline was also improved [28.6(13) vs 10.4(12.5) vs 7.5(12.0); p-value = 0.012]. There was significant improvement in all EQ-5D-5L scores in follow-up. There was no deterioration in mMRC scores during the follow-up (n = 4, 3% vs7, 5% vs 3, 2%; p-value = 0.86). Cases requiring oxygen had significantly poorer overall scores initially but there was no difference at 6 months. All ten graft losses had oxygen requirement and chronic graft dysfunction at baseline. CONCLUSION: Our initial assessment reports significant improvement in the quality of life in follow-up. The majority recovered from allograft dysfunction. Further research is warranted to study the full spectrum of follow-up. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.