title: Flow-PRA evaluation for antibody screening in patients awaiting kidney transplantation.
abstract: Flow-PRA is a flow cytometric method for both anti-HLA class I and class II antibody (Ab) detection. We evaluated this technique for Ab screening in patients awaiting kidney transplantation. After having established a rigorous threshold for positivity, a three-dilution difference in sensitivity between Flow-PRA and complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) persisted. The sensitivity of the method was satisfactory since all CDC-positive sera were also found to be positive with the Flow-PRA method. Discrimination between anti-HLA class I and class II Abs was excellent. Furthermore, all sera responsible for a positive flow cytometry crossmatch (FCXM) and a negative CDC-crossmatch (CDCXM) at the time of a putative transplant were found to be positive with Flow-PRA beads. The specificity was excellent for anti-class I Ab detection since no false positive serum was found. On the other hand, the specificity was lower for anti-class II detection, since 8.3% (2/24) false positive results were detected among all the negative sera tested. Overall, our results suggested that Flow-PRA should be of value for anti-HLA Ab screening prior to kidney transplantation.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Immunogenetics, EFS de Bourgogne Franche-Comté, Besançon, France. jmr@besancon.net
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Rebibou
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chabod
authors.forename: M C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Bittencourt
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Thevénin
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Chalopin
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hervé
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tiberghien
mesh_terms: D005434:Flow Cytometry; D015395:Histocompatibility Antigens Class I / Q000276:immunology*; D000949:Histocompatibility Antigens Class II / Q000276:immunology*; D006650:Histocompatibility Testing; D006801:Humans; D007518:Isoantibodies / Q000097:blood*; D016030:Kidney Transplantation; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
chemical_list: D015395:Histocompatibility Antigens Class I; D000949:Histocompatibility Antigens Class II; D007518:Isoantibodies