Donor pretreatment: rat heart allograft survival and measurement of passenger leukocyte depletion with indium-111.

The present experiment was designed to study the relationship between rat heart allograft survival and passenger leukocyte depletion in donor-pretreated animals. Untreated Lewis rats served as recipients of cardiac allografts from treated Fischer rats. Passenger leukocyte depletion was assayed with indium-111 oxine-labeled leukocytes (predominantly lymphocytes) which were infused into donor rats 6 hr before treatment with cyclophosphamide, antilymphocyte globulin (ALG), sublethal total body irradiation, or in vitro perfusion-preservation of the isolated beating heart. In vivo pretreatment of the donor with cyclophosphamide resulted in a significant prolongation of heart allograft survival but effected no reduction in graft-labeled lymphocytes. In vitro perfusion-preservation of the donor heart, for 1 to 2 hr, led to a 50 to 60% reduction in graft-labeled lymphocytes but failed to significantly prolong the survival of the heart allografts. Both ALG and sublethal total body irradiation donor pretreatments resulted in significant prolongation of heart allograft survival and a 20 to 25% labeled passenger lymphocyte depletion. This study demonstrates that there is no direct correlation between allograft survival and the degree of mobile passenger lymphocyte depletion, suggesting that the efficacy of leukocytotoxic donor pretreatment methods may depend in part on alternative mechanisms.