Background: As opposed to most solid-organ transplant recipients, patients with acute liver failure exhibit a pretransplant health status more comparable with the general population, and any posttransplant cardiovascular risk excess should thus be more attributable to transplantation-related factors alone.
Methods: This study compared the cardiovascular risk of 77 consecutive patients with acute liver failure at 5 years after liver transplantation with that of the general population using age, sex, and residence area-standardized prevalence ratios (SPR).
Results: At least one cardiovascular risk factor developed in 92% of patients. Treated hypertension, observed in 71% of patients at 5 years, was more common among patients than controls (SPR, 2.73; 95% confidence interval [CI], 2.06-3.55), whereas the 61% prevalence of dyslipidemia and 3% prevalence of impaired fasting glucose were significantly less frequent among patients (SPR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.51-0.92 and SPR, 0.29; 95% CI, 0.04-1.00). The 5-year prevalence of diabetes (10%), overweight (32%), and obesity (13%) deviated nonsignificantly from controls (SPR 1.90, 0.85, and 0.58). Antibody therapy associated with a 1.49-fold increase in the risk of hypertension (95% CI, 1.15-1.94) and a 6.43-fold increase in the risk of diabetes (95% CI, 1.18-34.9). Immunosuppression-type, steroids, acute rejection, retransplantation, or graft steatosis revealed nonsignificant risk alterations.
Conclusions: Liver transplantation and associated immunosuppression evidently cause hypertension, and possibly elicit diabetes in susceptible individuals. Conversely, the often reported transplantation-associated increased burden of overweight/obesity and dyslipidemia might relate mostly to other factors.