Dr. Jayme LockeThe Division of Transplantation’s Jayme Locke, M.D., recently received an R01 grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health for her research, “CKD Risk Prediction among Obese Living Kidney Donors.” The roughly $3.3 million award will be distributed over the course of five years.

“Studies of the general US population have demonstrated that obesity is correlated with increased risk for kidney disease,” Locke said. “The appropriate BMI cutoff above which living kidney donation is no longer safe is not known, and no tool exists for predicting post-donation kidney disease risk for obese persons. As one of the main surgeons evaluating and operating on living kidney donors at UAB, one of my primary interests involves understanding how to safely extend the practice of living kidney donation to include the healthiest subset of obese persons in order to expand the organ pool for recipients in need while simultaneously keeping the safety of living donors at the forefront.”