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Show 125 school of medicine and health sciences Many factors including inflammation present a risk to post-transplant graft function and must be care-fully managed. Inflammation is the body's natural response to local cellular injury, and renal inflamma-tion, known as nephritis, is associated with the deterioration of solid-organ transplants1. A bacterially-induced, chronic inflammatory disease, periodontitis, progresses through 5 stages (Figure 1)2 and destroys the connective tissue and bone that support the teeth3. Periodontal disease in its earlier stages affects just over half of adults age 30-90, and nearly 10% of adults 20-64 in its later stages4, 5. Making periodontal disease even more dangerous to transplant patients is a stringent im-munosuppressant regimen that places them at increased risk of infection, and the ability of periodon-tal bacteria to translocate in the body, linking them to systemic inflammations3, 6, 7, 8, 9. The available information begs the question, "Do patients with periodontal disease on immunosup-pressant medications, because of heightened incidence of infections, have an enhanced risk of athero-sclerosis due to increases in systemic inflammation, and thus an accelerated rate of kidney allograft dysfunction?" We hypothesize that an association between periodontal disease and allograft dysfunc-tion does exist, and expect patients with periodontal disease to have greater indicators of transplant glomerulopathy and graft rejection at a significantly greater rate than patients without periodontal disease. Establishment of such a correlation would prove invaluable in the effort to preserve graft function and health in transplant patients, reducing the number of failed grafts and patients returning to dialysis. A correlation will be confirmed by examining glomerular filtration rate, biopsy records scored accord-ing to the BANFF system, and creatinine levels of transplant patients with and without periodontal disease in a prospective cross-sectional study. Patients will be categorized into stages of periodontal disease using a 5-point scale and a subsequent chart review of patient data (Table 1) will be conduct-ed. Results will be analyzed using linear regression, nonparametric correlation coefficients, crosstabu-lation analysis, logistic regression and ordinal logistic regression. Figure 1. The 5 stages of periodontal disease.2 CORRELATIONS OF PERIODONTAL DISEASE ON LONG-TERM RENAL ALLOGRAFT DYSFUNCTION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF POST-TRANSPLANT GLOMERULOPATHY - A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY James Lelis (Heather Thiesset, John Sorensen, Fuad Shihab, Mark Mangelson, Lonnie Smith, Jason Schwartz) Department of General Surgery, Section of Transplantation University of Utah School of Medicine UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH ABSTRACTS James Lelis John Sorensen |