Acute rejection timing in the first post-transplant year is not associated with incident cardiac allograft vasculopathy

Abstract Heart transplantation (HT) is the durable therapy for end-stage heart failure (HF). Despite advances in immunosuppression, cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) remains a leading cause of late graft failure and mortality in the modern era. Prior studies have established donor age and immunological phenomena, such as acute cellular rejection (ACR), antibody-mediated rejection (AMR), and development of donor-specific antibodies (DSAs) as risk factors for CAV 1-5 . However, it remains unclear whether acute rejection (AR) that occurs early post-HT, when individuals experience the highest degree of immunosuppression, reflects higher baseline immune activity and confers a higher risk of future CAV compared to later AR, when immunosuppression is minimized. We therefore examined whether AR occurring during pre-specified early and intermediate intervals compared to those who did not experience AR in the first post-HT year was associated with future CAV among recipients without CAV at 1 year.