Immunological profile of patients awaiting a renal transplant

BACKGROUND: A renal transplant is the best possible treatment for patients with terminal renal failure. Advances in the development of techniques of screening of pre-formed antibodies have contributed to a notable improvement in the results obtained with allogenic transplants. METHODS: The aim of the present work is to study the nature, class, isotype and specificity of antibodies detected in patients awaiting renal transplantation at Complejo Hospitalario Universitario Juan Canalejo, as well as their relation with the level of anti-human leucocyte antigen (HLA) sensitization. RESULTS: In all patient groups, there was a predominance of IgG. The distribution of anti-HLA antibody class showed that the most frequent pattern corresponded to a mixture of class I and class II antibodies for all groups. The study of specificity of anti-HLA antibody showed that of the patients with at least one previous transplant, 72% developed specific anti-HLA antibodies against some of the incompatible antigens of the donor, 12% against HLA antigens not related with the phenotype of the donor and in 16% it was not possible to determine their specificity. Most patients developed antibodies against antigens of locus B, probably because of that the number of incompatibilities contributed by the donors is also greater for locus B. CONCLUSIONS: The exhaustive study of sera of patients on a waiting list for transplantation with respect to the nature, isotype, class and specificity of the antibody is important since it is possible that different antibodies can bring about, in the transplant, events that will have different consequences for the survival of the graft.