Infections in pediatric liver recipients treated for acute rejection.

M URINE MONOCLONAL antibody OKTJ (orthoclone OKT3). is a powerful immunosuppressant and has been shown to be very effective in reversal of acute rejection following kidney, liver a nd heart transplants. I·) As with any kind of immunosuppression, one would expect that use of OKTJ might be associated with increased incidence of infections. However, there have been only a few detailed studies of infections following the usc of OKTJ and even fewer comparing them to infections that occur when steroids only were the mainstay of anti-rejection therapy.,·5 Hence we undertook a detailed retrospective review of infections that occurred in children receiving OKT3 for hepatic allograft rejection and compared them to infections that occurred in a similar group of children whose rejection was treated with steroids only.