OBSERVATIONS IN PATIENTS WITH A WELL-TOLERATED HOMOTRANSPLANTED KIDNEY: POSSIBILITY OF A NEW SECONDARY DISEASE

Transplant glomerulopathy, late antibody-mediated rejection and the ABCD tetrad in kidney allograft biopsies for cause

To define the relative frequency of phenotypes of transplant glomerulopathy, we retrospectively reviewed the findings in 1036 biopsies for clinical indications from 1320 renal transplant patients followed in our clinics between 1997 and 2005. Transplant glomerulopathy, defined by double contours of glomerular basement membranes (D), was diagnosed in 53 biopsies (5.1%) from 41 patients (3.1%) at a median of 5.5 years post-transplant (range 3.8-381 months). In cases with D, we studied the frequency of circulating anti-HLA alloantibody (A), peritubular capillary basement membrane multilayering (B) and peritubular capillary C4d deposition (C). B was present in 48 (91%) of D biopsies. C4d staining by indirect immunofluorescence was detected in 18 of 50 D biopsies studied (36%). By Flow PRA Screening or ELISA, A was detected in 33 (70%) in 47 D cases with available sera, of which 28/33 or 85% were donor-specific. Class II (13/33) or class I and II (17/33) were more common than class I (3/33) antibodies. Thus 73% of transplant glomerulopathy has evidence of alloantibody-mediated injury (A and/or C), with ABCD and ABD being the common phenotypes in biopsies for cause. The remaining 27%, mostly BD, may be a different disease or a stage in which A and C are undetectable.

A decade followup in early cases of renal homotransplantation

Sixty-four consecutive patients underwent renal homotransplantation 10 1/6 to 11(1/2) years ago, 46 from related and 18 from nonrelated living donors. Thirty-six of these recipients were alive when this series was presented to the American Surgical Assocation in 1965. Now, nine years later, 26 (72%) of the 36 still survive, in 22 instances with function of their original grafts. The 10 who died in the interim tended to have subnormal renal function or graft failure. However, the actual causes of death included 2 or more examples each of myocardial infarction, hepatitis, or other systemic infections. The prognosis for achieving a one decade survival was not obviously related to HL-A tissue match. The best results were with related kidneys, within which subgroup 24 (52%) of the original recipients are still alive. However, there was no particular category of consanguineous donor that had a marked superiority. Only 2 of 18 nonrelated recipients are still alive. All 36 patients who were alive in 1965 had a biopsy of their renal homograft. Kidneys that were destined to function for a decade tended to have relatively minor histopathologic abnormalities. If serious glomerular lesions were found, the outlook for long graft survival was grave. Vascular lesions had a somewhat less serious import. Mononuclear cell infiltration, tubular atrophy, and interstitial fibrosis proved prognostically to be the least significant. Long-term followup of these early cases has shown the durability of chronic renal homografts, particularly if these are from related donors, and has demonstrated the very high degree of rehabilitation that could be achieved even in the early days of renal homotransplantation.

Pathogenesis of "transplant lung". I. Interstitial pulmonary edema

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The management, function and histology of long functioning renal allografts in dogs on immunosuppressive drug therapy

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Transplant lung--a new syndrome

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Comparative results of cadaver and related donor renal homografts in man, and immunologic implications of the outcome of second and paired transplants

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Human cadaveric renal transplantation. Report of twenty cases

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Chronic survival after human renal homotransplantation. Lymphocyte-antigen matching, pathology and influence of thymectomy

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