Prolongation of renal allograft survival in DLA-tissue typed beagles after third-party leucocyte and erythrocyte transfusion.

In a dog model, both transfusion of leucocytes and of erythrocytes induced lymphocytotoxic antibodies. The results, obtained in DLA identical littermate and DLA nonidentical nonrelated beagle recipient pairs, suggest a correlation between DLA-type and lymphocytotoxic immune response. Two weeks after the last of three transfusions from different blood donors, kidneys from unrelated DLA-mismatched donrs were transplanted to the beagle recipients. A standard postoperative immunosuppressive regimen was given. No correlation between erythrocyte or leucocyte induced immune response was observed, but both erythrocyte as well as leucocyte transfusions significantly prolonged renal allograft survival as compared with nontransfused controls.