Islet transplantation in Japan—Report from the Japanese Islet Transplantation Registry—

Abstract

Following the first clinical islet transplantation procedure in 2004 and the initial era of performing islet transplantation as a single-center clinical trial, a multicenter clinical trial of islet transplantation with the goal of achieving coverage by national health insurance was started in 2012. Improvement of islet transplantation outcomes was achieved using anti-thymocyte globulin, and islet transplantation finally obtained coverage by Japanese national health insurance in 2020, marking the advent of the third era of clinical islet transplantation. Unfortunately, there were no cases of islet transplantation in 2020, as the start of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a decrease in donor information for islet transplantation. However, in 2021, two clinical islet transplants were performed. We herein report the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on islet transplantation in Japan, which started at almost the same time as the introduction of national health insurance coverage for islet transplantation, and describe the two cases of islet transplantation performed in 2021.