Super-Tight Control of Blood Sugar After Kidney Transplant May Be Counterproductive

To see if tightly controlling blood sugar provides improved results in patients who received a kidney transplant, a group of diabetic post-transplant patients were followed for three days. A subset of the randomly assigned group had their blood glucose kept in tight range with IV insulin, while a control group received insulin as they ordinarily would, via injections.

According to Kathie L. Hermayer, MD, and colleagues at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, who reported on the study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, intensive management via the IV insulin raised the risk of graft rejection to 20 percent, compared with 4 percent among patients in the control group. “Intensive therapy may be harmful for rejection,” Hermayer said, adding that “”Managing glucose levels in the renal transplant patient is challenging…due to immunosuppressive agents and corticosteroid dosing.”

Source: The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism