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Dealing with sera from prospective transplant recipients, we need a sensitive and specific technique for proper determination of these patients’ allosensitization status. A new flow-cytometry based assay (FlowPRATM) proved to be more sensitive in revealing the existence of HLA- specific IgG antibodies (Abs) than conventional citotoxicity (CDC) based assay. Using FlowPRATM Screening and Specific tests we investigated humoral sensitization to HLA due to different immunizing events in 230 transplant candidates exposed to a single kind of immunizing event. Patient population was thus divided in three groups: Ts-group (110 transfused pts); Tx-group (41 previously transplanted pts); Pg-group (79 pts who had pregnancies and/or abortions). FlowPRA Screening highlighted a significantly higher incidence of sensitized subjects in both the Tx-group (36.6%, P

Background. Improvements in immunosuppressive therapy have greatly reduced acute rejetion(ARj)episodes, ensuring better short-term graft outcome, but have not modified long-term survival in renal transplantation. It is now well accepted that chronic rejetion(CRj) can be determined by both immune and /or nonimmune mechanisms. The aim of this study was to evaluate the importance of the posttransplant humoral immune responce towards mismatched HLA graft antigens in CRj occurrence and graft outcome. Methods. Serume samples from 120 nonpresensitized renal transplant recipients were prospectively screened for 1 year after surgery by means of flow cytometry cross-match (FCXM) and FlowPRA beads (microbeads coated with purified HLA class I and class II antigens) assays. All tranplants were followed-up for 2 years or until graft removal. Results. FCXM monitoring identified donor-specific antibodies(DS-Abs) in 29 (24.2%) of 120 transplanted patients. Correlation with clinical data highlighteda higher incidence of ARj in DS-Abs- positive patients compared to negative patients (62% vs 13%, P