Mixed epidermal cell-lymphocyte reaction in prediction of acute graft-versus-host disease in bone marrow recipients.

Peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) and epidermal cells (EC) of 44 patients to be grafted with bone marrow from an HLA-identical sibling have been used as stimulator cells in primary cultures with effector PBL of one or several potential donors. Proliferative responses against PBL did not differ from those obtained with effector cells cultured in medium alone, whereas EC induced clearly positive proliferation in 21/53 (40%) of the pairs tested. Evaluation of 30 patients followed for more than 3 months after the graft shows that a high level of response in the mixed epidermal cell lymphocyte reaction is directly correlated with the incidence of acute graft-versus-host disease.