Donate a kidney; you'll feel good and be just as healthy

Living donors' life spans and risk for various diseases, including kidney disease, were the same or better as non-donors, University of Minnesota researchers find.

By Josephine Marcotty, Star Tribune

January 28, 2009

People who donate a kidney live just as long and are just as healthy as those with two kidneys, according to a new study by University of Minnesota researchers that is the largest ever done on the long-term health consequences of donation.

The study provides reassurance about the safety of kidney donation that could encourage more organ donations at a time when the need for such transplants is on the rise. Today there are 78,000 people on the kidney transplant list, and most will not survive the five- to seven-year wait for a kidney from a deceased donor.

"I'm hoping that this will alleviate the anxiety about living with one kidney," said Dr. Hassan Ibrahim, a university transplant surgeon and the lead author. "We can remove a lot of misconceptions."

The findings are in today's New England Journal of Medicine with an editorial that described the results as surprising and quite reassuring.

Ibrahim and his co-authors tracked down nearly all of the 3,700 people who had donated kidneys at the university's transplant center between 1963 and 2007. They found that the donors' life spans, and their risk for high blood pressure, diabetes, and, most important, kidney disease were the same as or better than those of non-donors of similar age, race and gender.

The result puts to rest lingering questions about the long-term health consequences for people who give a kidney to a family member, friend or stranger, said Dr. Bryan Becker, president of the National Kidney Foundation and a surgeon at the University of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the research. Now, he said, transplant surgeons "can give them confidence that their own health will not be compromised."

The number of people with kidney failure is growing at an astronomical rate -- 90,000 new cases per year, according to the National Kidney Foundation -- the result of an aging population beset with obesity, diabetes and other chronic conditions.

Cost of kidney transplantation overseas