Corticosteroid elimination: the Cincinnati experience.

Elimination of corticosteroid-related morbidity has been a goal of transplant clinicians from the earliest days of renal transplantation more than 50 years ago. Over the past decade, this goal has begun to be realized. Herein, we describe our efforts to eliminate corticosteroid therapy from maintenance immunosuppression-efforts that have spanned 15 years and have included design and conduct of five multicenter trials and over ten single center trials with over 650 patients at the University of Cincinnati. These efforts have led to a near complete elimination of corticosteroid-related morbidity, and, importantly, a more precise definition of the risk/benefit assessments of corticosteroid withdrawal in individual patient populations, which has allowed individualization and tailoring of corticosteroid-free immunosuppression.