ABO blood group relationships to kidney transplant recipient and graft outcomes.

On analysis of 15,523 kidney transplant recipients, blood group O was not associated with patient survival (hazard ratio (HR) 0.96, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.89-1.04) nor death censored graft survival (HR 0.97, 95% CI 0.89-1.05) compared to non-blood group O recipients. Competing risks analyses showed an increased risk of cancer-related mortality in blood group O recipients on univariate analyses (HR 1.18, 95% CI 1.01-1.37) however, this became insignificant on multivariate analyses. On secondary analyses, recipient blood group AB (4.11% participants) was associated with inferior death censored graft survival compared to those with blood group O (HR 1.24, 95% CI 1.02-1.50). Although recipient ABO blood groups were not associated with patient nor graft survival, differences in cause-specific mortality between individual blood groups cannot be excluded based on current analyses.