A case report on lipofuscin deposition in a graft biopsy two years after kidney transplantation: an insignificant bystander or a pathogenic benefactor?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Lipofuscin deposition is a characteristic manifestation of aging. There is very limited literature in humans and in animals describing these deposits in native kidneys. Overall, it is thought to be non-pathogenic and successful transplants from a donor with lipofuscin deposits have been reported. We present the case of a patient who underwent a kidney transplant and a for-cause biopsy post-transplantation incidentally revealed lipofuscin deposition. CASE PRESENTATION: A 48-year old gentleman with a past medical history of diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease, and ischemic and then hemorrhagic cardiovascular accident underwent a successful kidney transplant. His donor was an expanded criteria donor with no major past medical history. Post-transplant course was complicated by delayed graft function requiring one dialysis treatment for hyperkalemia. After that he had an uneventful course and achieved a baseline creatinine of 1.2 mg/dL, with no proteinuria. On a routine 19-month follow-up he was noted to have proteinuria and an antibody against the major-histocompatibility-complex class I-related chain A. A graft biopsy revealed acute antibody-mediated rejection and impressive lipofuscin deposition. He was subsequently treated with an antibody-mediated rejection protocol that included high dose steroids, Rituximab, plasmapheresis, and intravenous immunoglobulin, but responded poorly to this regimen. A 6-month follow up biopsy continued to show lipofuscin deposition, with similar microvascular injury scores and 12-months later his creatinine remained stable but his proteinuria worsened. Patient was struggling with recurrent infectious episodes requiring hospitalizations and thus no further diagnostic or therapeutic treatments were pursued. CONCLUSIONS: Lipofuscin deposition has been reported in solid organ transplants but the significance and cause are not well understood. Several physiologic and some pathologic causes to these deposits have been reported including age, diabetes, medications and a genetic syndrome. We propose that immunologic causes such as rejection in the presence of other risk factors could potentiate the oxidative stress leading to excessive lipofuscin deposition in kidney transplants. In the case of our patient, we conclude that these deposits were likely recipient-derived, and postulate that the cumulative burden of inflammation from rejection, and underlying medical conditions led to increased lipofuscin deposition. We speculate them to be an innocent bystander.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.009 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".