Outcomes of living kidney donors with medullary sponge kidney

BACKGROUND: Patients with medullary sponge kidney (MSK) commonly encounter recurrent nephrolithiasis. The existing knowledge on safety of donors with MSK has not been studied. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective cohort study at a tertiary referral hospital to assess the outcomes of living kidney donors with MSK. All adults with MSK (N = 26) who underwent nephrectomy as living kidney donors between January 2000 and September 2014 were included. Non-donors with MSK (N = 78) were randomly selected by matching the year of birth and the comorbidity score with a ratio of 1:3 for comparison. RESULTS: The incident rates of symptomatic stone were 0.7, 0.4 and 4.9 events/100 patient-years in donors, recipients and non-donors, respectively. After adjusting for history of kidney stones and baseline estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), the kidney stone-related event was significantly lower in donors than in non-donors (hazard ratio 0.14; 95% confidence interval 0.01–0.66). One recipient of MSK living donor had symptomatic stone at median follow-up time of 8.4 years (interquartile range 5.6–12.4 years). None of MSK donors had hypercalciuria, hypocitraturia or hyperoxaluria prior to kidney donation. At 5 years after the index surgery date, there was no significant difference in eGFR between donors and non-donors (76.1 versus 70.9 mL/min/1.73 m(2), P = 0.12). CONCLUSIONS: These findings are reassuring for the safety of MSK kidney donors with normal kidney function, low kidney stone risk and no significant comorbidity.