THE PRESENCE OF POSTTRANSPLANT HLA-SPECIFIC IgG ANTIBODIES DETECTED BY ENZYME-LINKED IMMUNOSORBENT ASSAY CORRELATES WITH SPECIFIC REJECTION PATHOLOGIES

Alessandro Nanni Costa, Maria Scolari, S. Iannelli, Andrea Buscaroli, Giovanni Liviano D’Arcangelo, Bruno Brando, Francesco Indiveri, M Savi, Luigi Carlo Borgnino, Lucia Barbara DeSanctis,

Transplantation · 1997 · 49 citations · 13 references

Concepts

Abstract

Posttransplant monitoring of anti-HLA antibodies with routine techniques gives unsatisfactory results due to a variety of technical limitations. We investigated how a new alternative technique correlates with posttransplant clinical events. A total of 313 nonselected serum samples from 136 patients were screened by an ELISA utilizing captured soluble HLA class I antigens. We observed the absence of anti-HLA antibody production in acute rejection cases responding to standard antirejection therapy. On the other hand, we showed a clear presence of these antibodies in acute rejection episodes not responding to standard therapy (P<0.0001) and in chronic rejection (P<0.001). We conclude that routine posttransplant monitoring by ELISA offers early risk assessment that is crucial for proper immunosuppression and for antirejection therapy choice.

References

13