Introduction: Very little is known about the prevalence of New onset diabetes after Transplant (NODAT) in Sub-saharans and Eastern Africans. Most of the data are related to African Americans and North and South Africa. The aims of this study were to examine the prevalence of NODAT in Sudanese renal transplant population and to compare it with the published literature and to identify the risk factors for developing NODAT.

Materials and Methods: 150 patients who underwent live-related kidney transplant during the period January 2015 to January 2016 were included in this study. Diabetic patients were excluded. Follow-up was for 2 years post-transplant. The variables studied were age, sex, body mass index, calcineurin inhibitor used, family history of diabetes mellitus (DM), pre-transplant steroid therapy, dyslipidemia and hepatitis C virus infection.

Results: Twenty three patients (15.3%) developed NODAT during the study period. On multivariate analysis, the risk factors for developing NODAT were: A family history of DM (p=0.01), and pre-transplant steroid therapy (p=0.01).

Conclusion: The prevalence of NODAT in this study population was significantly lower than the reported prevalence in African Americans. The newly reported finding of the association between pre-transplant steroid therapy and NODAT warrants further investigation.