International study of histocompatibility in renal transplantation.

With international collaboration, data on more than 2000 cadaver donor transplants were collected and analyzed. In first transplants, the number of pretransplant transfusions given to the recipients correlated significantly with graft survival (P less than 0.0001). No correlation of graft outcome was found with matching for HLA-A,B. HLA-DR matching was significantly correlated with outcome in the North American transplants, but not in the European subset of transplants. In second transplants, HLA-DR matching and the duration of the first transplants correlated significantly with graft survival, whereas there was no correlation with HLA-A,B matching or transfusions.