Poster Group 11 - Clinical Transplantation

In liver transplantation, studies about the impact of HLA-matching have given contradictory results, but the HLA-C effect liver transplantation is still unexplored. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the involvement of the HLA-C matching on acute rejection and graft survival in liver allografts. For this purpose, we analyzed 100 recipient-donor pairs and recipients were classified into two groups, those with acute rejection and those without acute rejection. HLA-C typing was performed by PCR-SSP method. Statistical analysis was made using SPSS program, survival rates were computed with the Kaplan-Meier method, and the generalized Wilcoxon test. When the HLA-C match between donor and recipient was analyzed, the frequency of acute rejection was found to decrease from 46.3% in HLA-C incompatible transplants (2 mismatches) to 33.3% and 16.6% for transplants with 1 or 0 mismatches respectively. In regard to graft survival, survival rates increased with a major level of HLAC compatibility. Thus, at 5-year transplants performed with 2 mismatches showed a graft survival rate of 58.2%, whereas this was of 74.0% in those with 1 mismatch and a of 83.3% in the case of transplants done with 0 mismatches. In conclusion, these results show, for a first time, that the study of HLA-C allelic compatibility could have a beneficial effect both in shortand long-term liver graft acceptance.