Clinical correlations of peripheral blood microchimerism after liver transplantation

The aim of this study was to evaluate microchimerism after human liver tran splantation (LT). This study included 13 female recipients who received hep atic allograft from male donors at Asan Medical Center. A nested PCR specif ic for Y-chromosome gene (DYZ3) was used to analyze the small number of mal e cells in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells of the female recipients. Microchimerism was observed in 6 of 13 recipients and 16 out of 35 samples . Only 3 patients showed microchimerism 3 months after LT. There was no sta tistical difference between the presence of microchimerism and clinical fin dings such as type of donor, type of immunosuppression, episode of rejectio n and age of recipient. This study did not show any clinical relevance of m icrochimerism and further larger study are needed to confirm the results.