Pancreatic steatosis is an independent risk factor for post-transplant diabetes mellitus in kidney transplant patients.

Abstract

Post-transplant diabetes mellitus (PTDM) is associated with an increased risk of post-transplant cardiovascular diseases, and several risk factors of PTDM have been shown in the literature. Yet, the relationship between hepatic and pancreatic steatosis with post-transplant diabetes mellitus remains vague. We aimed to evaluate pancreatic steatosis, a novel component of metabolic syndrome, and hepatic steatosis association with post-transplant diabetes mellitus in a single-center retrospective cohort study conducted on kidney transplant recipients. We have performed a single-center retrospective cohort study involving all kidney transplant recipients. We have utilized pretransplant Fibrosis-4, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease fibrosis score, and abdominal computed tomography for the assessment of visceral steatosis status. We have included 373 kidney transplant recipients with a mean follow-up period of 32 months in our final analysis. Post-transplant diabetes mellitus risk is associated with older age (p<.001), higher body-mass index (p<.001), nonalcoholic fatty liver disease-fibrosis score (p=.002), hepatic (p<.001) or pancreatic (p<.001) steatosis on imaging and higher pre-transplant serum triglyceride (p=.003) and glucose levels (p=.001) after multivariate analysis. Our study illustrates that recipients' pancreatic steatosis is an independent predictive factor for post-transplant diabetes mellitus including in kidney transplant patients.