Allergy, eczema common after pediatric solid organ transplantation

May 1, 2018|Pediatric News

Track atopy, allergy in pediatric transplantation

FROM JOURNAL OF PEDIATRICS

A total of 34% of children who underwent solid organ transplantation subsequently developed eczema, food allergy, rhinitis, eosinophilic gastrointestinal disease, or asthma, according to the results of a single-center retrospective cohort study.

Another 6.6% of patients developed autoimmunity, usually autoimmune cytopenia, inflammatory bowel disease, or vasculitis, wrote Nufar Marcus, MD, of the University of Toronto, and her associates.

Posttransplant allergy, autoimmunity, and immune-mediated disorders (PTAA) likely share a common pathogenesis “and may represent a unique state of post-transplant immune-dysregulation,” they wrote. The report was published in the Journal of Pediatrics.

The study included 273 children who underwent solid organ transplantation and were followed for a median 3.6 years (range, 1.7-6.3 years). None had immune-mediated conditions or allergies diagnosed at baseline. Posttransplantation allergies most commonly included eczema (51%), asthma (32%), food allergy (25%, including 5% with associated anaphylaxis), rhinitis (17%), and eosinophilic esophagitis, gastritis, or enteritis (13%).

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Median age at transplantation was 2.9 years (range, 0.7-10.3 years) and 59% of patients were male. Procedures usually involved liver (111) or heart (103) transplantation, while 52 patients underwent kidney transplantation and 7 underwent multivisceral transplantation. Heart transplantation patients were significantly more likely to develop asthma and autoimmunity, while liver transplantation patients had a significantly greater incidence of food allergies and eosinophilic gastrointestinal disease. “Recipients of multivisceral transplantation [also] had a high prevalence of autoimmunity [43%],” the researchers wrote.

Although only 31% of patients had information available on family history of allergy, those with a positive family history of allergy had a fivefold greater odds of posttransplantation PTAA, compared with other patients. Other risk factors for PTAA included female sex, young age at transplantation, eosinophilia, and a positive test for Epstein-Barr virus after transplantation, Dr. Marcus and associates said.

“The association of blood eosinophilia and PTAA reached statistical significance only when the transplant recipient was at least 6 months of age, demonstrating the nonspecific nature of abnormally high eosinophil counts during the first months of life,” they noted. The longer patients had eosinophilia after transplantation, the more likely they were to develop PTAA, “suggest[ing] a potential detrimental effect of prolonged activation of the eosinophilic-associated immune arms.”