Transcripts
DR. BRANDT:
I picked what I thought were the nine best studies (and they're in your references) published between 1988 and 1998; 478 patients were evaluated in these studies, that was 73 percent of the patients with HUS, which means that 27 percent were lost to follow-up.
So three quarters of the patients who had HUS had come back for follow-up and the results are based on that.
Follow-up ranged from a half year to 28 years. Although for each study, it averaged at least five years or greater. About 35 percent of patients have some evidence of renal sequelae, some abnormalities. Hypertension was found in up to 20 percent. Proteinuria was found in eight to thirty-one percent; or it was actually GFR, measured by creatinine or some other method, that was frankly low, ranging from 1 — 28%.
And pretty consistently across the studies, there was about a five percent incidence of end stage renal disease, or in other words, dialysis or transplantation required because of HUS. And that was much more consistent than some of this other information that varied quite a bit.
So this means 65 percent with long term follow-up have no evidence of renal damage. So about two thirds have really done very well. About a third, though, have some things that worry us. It's hard to know how significant these are, but it worries us. And about five percent have developed end stage renal disease as a result of that long past episode of HUS.
