Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Apr 22:4:1360856.
doi: 10.3389/fneph.2024.1360856. eCollection 2024.

Gender and kidney transplantation

Arushi Nautiyal  1 , Soumita Bagchi  2 , Shyam Bihari Bansal  3
Affiliations
Review

Gender and kidney transplantation

Arushi Nautiyal et al. Front Nephrol. .

Abstract

Kidney transplantation provides the best form of kidney replacement therapy with improvement in quality of life and longevity. However, disparity exists in its availability, utilisation and outcomes, not only due to donor availability or financial constraints but also arising from the influence of biological sex and its sociocultural attribute i.e., Gender. Women make up the majority of kidney donors but are less likely to be counselled regarding transpantation, be waitlisted or receive living/deceased donor kidney. Biological differences also contribute to differences in kidney transplantation among the sexes. Women are more likely to be sensitised owing to pregnancy, especially in multiparous individuals, complicating donor compatibility. A heightened immune system in women, evidenced by more autoimmune illnesses, increases the risk of allograft rejection and loss. Differences in the pharmacokinetics of transplant drugs owing to biological variances could also contribute to variability in outcomes. Transgender medicine is also increasingly becoming a relevant topic of study, providing greater challenges in the form of hormonal manipulations and anatomic changes. It is thus important to determine and study transplantation and its nuances in this backdrop to be able to provide relevant sex and gender-specific interventions and design better practices for optimum kidney transplant utilisation and outcomes.

Keywords: India; gender; kidney; sex; transplantation; women.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Reasons attributed by nephrologists for gender disparity in access to transplantation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Miguel-Aliaga I. Let’s talk about (biological) sex. Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. (2022) 23:227–8. doi: 10.1038/s41580-022-00467-w - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Tannenbaum C, Ellis RP, Eyssel F, Zou J, Schiebinger L. Sex and gender analysis improves science and engineering. Nature. (2019) 575:137–46. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1657-6 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Steinberg JR, Turner BE, Weeks BT, Magnani CJ, Wong BO, Rodriguez F, et al. . Analysis of female enrollment and participant sex by burden of disease in US clinical trials between 2000 and 2020. JAMA Netw Open. (2021) 4:e2113749. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.13749 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Mathur P, Leburu S, Kulothungan V. Prevalence, awareness, treatment and control of diabetes in India from the countrywide national NCD monitoring survey. Front Public Health. (2022) 10:748157. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.748157 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kumar V, Yadav AK, Sethi J, Ghosh A, Sahay M, Prasad N, et al. . The Indian Chronic Kidney Disease (ICKD) study: baseline characteristics. Clin Kidney J. (2021) 15:60–9. doi: 10.1093/ckj/sfab149 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

LinkOut - more resources