The discrepancy between the increasing number of patients listed for kidney transplantation and limited cadaver donor sources has led the transplant community towards indication of elderly people as potential kidney donors. Based on clinical data, the kidney grafts explanted from aged donors have limited survival rates compared with younger ones. The donor age has been also implicated as the important alloantigen-independent risk factor for later onset of chronic allograft neprohopathy called chronic rejection. In this review we focused on some pathophysiological aspects of kidney aging and on the fate of transplanted kidney removed from elderly donors.

        Key words: aging, kidney transplantation, chronic rejection.