In kidney paired donation (KPD), incompatible pairs exchange kidneys so that each recipient receives a compatible organ. This modality is underutilized partly because of the difficulty of finding a suitable match among incompatible pairs. Alternatively, recipients with compatible donors might enter KPD arrangements in order to be matched with a donor predicted to give greater allograft durability or for other altruistic reasons. Using simulated donors and recipients, we investigated the impact of allowing recipients and their compatible donors to participate in KPD. For KPD programs of any size, the participation of compatible donor/recipient pairs nearly doubled the match rate for incompatible pairs (28.2% to 64.5% for single-center program, 37.4% to 75.4% for national program). Legal, logistical, and governmental controversies have hampered the expansion of KPD in the United States by delaying the creation of a national program. The inclusion of compatible pairs into small single-center pools could achieve match rates that would surpass that which could be realized by a national list made up of only incompatible pairs. This new paradigm of KPD can immediately be instituted at the singlecenter level, while the greatest gains will be achieved by incorporating compatible pairs into a national program.
Heritability is essential for understanding the biological causes of disease but requires laborious patient recruitment and phenotype ascertainment. Electronic health records (EHRs) passively capture a wide range of clinically relevant data and provide a resource for studying the heritability of traits that are not typically accessible. EHRs contain next-of-kin information collected via patient emergency contact forms, but until now, these data have gone unused in research. We mined emergency contact data at three academic medical centers and identified 7.4 million familial relationships while maintaining patient privacy. Identified relationships were consistent with genetically derived relatedness. We used EHR data to compute heritability estimates for 500 disease phenotypes. Overall, estimates were consistent with the literature and between sites. Inconsistencies were indicative of limitations and opportunities unique to EHR research. These analyses provide a validation of the use of EHRs for genetics and disease research.
The purpose of this research was to understand institutional review board (IRB) challenges regarding youth-focused research submissions and to present advice from administrators. Semistructured self-report questionnaires were sent via e-mail to administrators identified using published lists of universities and hospitals and Internet searches. Of 183 eligible institutions, 49 responded. One half indicated they never granted parental waivers. Among those considering waivers, decision factors in-
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.