Efficacy of perioperative portal venous inoculation with donor lymphocytes on skin graft survivals in the rat.

Although the administration of donor lymphocytes via portal vein (PV) on the day of transplantation significantly prolongs rat renal allograft survivals and the unresponsive state is mediated by an antigen-specific suppressor factor in the serum, significant variations exist among rodent models in terms of immunogenicity and mechanism of antigen presentation. The present studies sought to assess the effect of perioperative PV inoculation with donor lymphocytes on skin allograft survivals. Donor lymphocytes were prepared from Brown-Norway (BN, RT-1n) or third-party DA (RT-1a) rat spleens and lymph nodes and injected via PV or intravenously to Lewis (LEW, RT-1l) hosts on the day of skin grafting. Untreated LEW hosts rejected BN skin grafts at 9.0 +/- 1.4 days (n = 10). Intravenous administration of 1 x 10(8) BN cells into LEW hosts on day 0 did not prolong the skin graft survivals (MST = 8.6 +/- 1.2 days, n = 7, NS), whereas PV inoculation of 1 x 10(8) BN cells prolonged skin graft survival to 13.4 +/- 3.9 (n = 8, P < .01). PV administration of 1 x 10(8) DA cells to LEW hosts did not prolong the survival of BN skin grafts (MST = 8.6 +/- 1.5 days, n = 6). PV inoculation with BN cells inhibited the generation of anti-BN delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) response in the hosts, whereas untreated control hosts or hosts inoculated with third-party DA cells could not inhibit the anti-BN DTH response.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)