Effect of HLA-DR-shared blood transfusion on the clinical outcome of heart transplantation

Pretransplant blood transfusion can have a favorable effect on renal and cardiac graft survival. In a previous study, we found that HLA-DR-shared blood transfusions led to better graft survival after kidney transplantation. In the present study, we tried to confirm and extend these findings by analyzing the effects of blood transfusion on the clinical course following heart transplantation. According to a predefined protocol, cardiac allograft recipients received random blood transfusion before surgery. A beneficial effect of HLA-DR-shared blood transfusion could be observed on survival and on the number of rejection episodes. Patients who had received an HLA-mismatched transfusion had significantly more infections, and in this group, more patients died due to malignancies. To study a possible role of immunomodulating T cells, patients who had or had not received prophylactic anti-T cell therapy were analyzed separately. In both groups, a beneficial effect of HLA-DR-shared blood transfusion could be demonstrated. These results indicate that the administration of HLA-DR-matched blood transfusion before transplantation is beneficial in cardiac allograft recipients, and that regulatory T cells are either not directly involved or (partly) resistant to modulation by anti-T cell antibody therapy.