MU Sinclair School of Nursing

Researcher Strives to Help

Kidney Transplant Patients Stay Healthy

Contact: Pam Roe
S218 School of Nursing
(573) 884-2690

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June 29, 2005

COLUMBIA , Mo. – A MU nurse researcher is working with the University Hospital kidney transplant team to help kidney recipients keep their kidney longer thus allowing more people to receive the life-giving organ.

“Once someone receives a kidney transplant, the team strives to help them keep it as long as possible,” Cindy Russell, MU Sinclair School of Nursing assistant professor and researcher said. “The longer the patient keeps their new kidney, the more kidneys become available for those on the waiting list.”

Russell recently received a 3-year, $220,000 National Institutes of Health grant to study 150 adult kidney transplant recipients. Her study uses the Medication Event Monitoring System (MEMS), which contains a small microchip in the cap that measures the dates and times the caps are removed from their medicine bottles. The MEMS will be used on the two major immunosuppressant medications transplant recipients must take so their bodies won't reject their new kidneys.

After one year, Russell will collect the caps and insert them into a scanner that downloads its information into her study's database. This is the second phase of Russell's study. While she analyses how well patients followed the transplant team's instruction on when and how often to take their medication, she will also be looking for patterns in the patient's medication taking.

For example, Russell will analyze whether medications were taken on time, early, late, or if doses were missed. Then she will follow the recipient's outcomes one and two years after the initial data has been collected.

“We will look at rate of infection, the number of rejections, if a kidney was lost and even death to see if there is a correlation between these factors and the patient's medication compliance,” Russell said. “This study is also a preliminary step to evaluating intervening methods to reduce medication noncompliance and, consequently, undesirable patient outcomes.”

At the beginning of the study, all research subjects will be surveyed for three key psychological indicators to see if this information can help predict who will or won't take their medications as prescribed. The three indicators are tendencies for depression, social support and the patient's confidence in their ability to take their medication.

“With this information, we hope to find characteristics that could predict potential problems and develop intervention methods, that would help keep kidney transplant patients as healthy as possible and extend the life of their new kidneys and their lives overall,” Russell said.

Russell was also one in 11 post-doctoral scholars who received the John A. Hartford Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies Building Academic Geriatric Nursing Capacity fellowship. With this two-year project, Russell and a collaborative team at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center will study 50 kidney recipients 60 years of age and older. In addition to the research techniques mentioned previously, the team will use the “ Memphis ” survey. This survey tool, developed at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, measures the effects of the immunosuppressive medicine's side effects.

The MU research team consists of Russell; Catherine Ashbaugh, Advanced Practice Nurse, University of Missouri Health Care-Transplant Department; Vicki Conn, Associate Dean for Research, MU Sinclair School of Nursing; Gilbert Ross, Interim Director, MU Transplant Program; Richard Madsen, MU Emeritus Professor of Statistics; Sabina De Geest, Professor of Nursing and Director, Institute of Nursing Science, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; and Barbara Tanner, the project's research assistant.

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