title: Development, stability, and clinical correlations of allogeneic microchimerism after solid organ transplantation.
abstract: To assess the development, stability, and clinical relevance of donor-type microchimerism, skin and blood were analyzed in heart (n = 53) and liver (n = 18) transplant recipients by nested polymerase chain reaction. Microchimerism was detectable in 40 (75%) and 13 (72%) patients after heart and liver transplantation, respectively. In heart transplantation, chimerism-positive patients showed a lower frequency of acute rejection as compared with negative patients, although this was only of borderline statistical significance. Repeated intraindividual analyses demonstrated variable patterns of microchimerism over time, but changes did not correlate to the clinical state. In liver transplantation, chimeric state showed no clear correlation with the patients' immunological situation. Our results demonstrate that peripheral microchimerism frequently develops after different types of organ transplantation and represents a dynamic process but without diagnostic value to predict the immunological risk for individual patients.
authors.affiliation: Klinik für Abdominal- und Transplantationschirurgie, Medizinische Hochschule Hannover, Germany.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hisanaga
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hundrieser
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Böker
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Uthoff
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Raddatz
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wahlers
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wonigeit
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pichlmayr
authors.forename: H J
authors.initials: HJ
authors.lastname: Schlitt
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D016027:Heart Transplantation / Q000276:immunology*; D006650:Histocompatibility Testing; D006801:Humans; D016031:Liver Transplantation / Q000276:immunology*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D018183:Transplantation Chimera; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous
chemical_list: D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins