APOL1 Genetic Testing Program for Living Donors

"The APOL1 testing program is designed to help living donor candidates to reduce their decisional conflict and enhance their informed consent regarding living donation. This intervention component entails: (1) an artificial intelligence-based conversational agent chatbot providing foundational information about the relationship between APOL1 and kidney disease and living donor outcomes, and APOL1 testing. The chatbot helps to relieve the workload on clinicians and scale up information giving. (2) The transplant nephrologist counseling component includes discussion about the APOL1 test results and shared decision making about donation, in a culturally competent manner, so as to enhance donor candidates' informed consent for living donation."

APOL1 genetic testing will be performed while live kidney donor candidates are undergoing donor evaluation to identify whether they are at elevated risk of kidney disease post-donation. This risk information is expected to better enable donor candidates to make meaningful informed decisions about donating.

APOL1 genetic test results will be integrated into the electronic health record to provide clinical decision support to transplant nephrologists in evaluating donor candidates.