Bone marrow augmentation for heart, liver, and small bowel transplantation: prolongation of graft survival and incidence of graft-versus-host disease.

THE persistence of donor leukocvtes in recipients after transplantation (chimerism) has been postulated as the basis for graft acceptance. I.: There have been direct efforts to augment chimerism in order to increase the chance of graft acceptance. even though the mechanism of the bidirectional modulation between host and chimeric cells to achieve donor-specific hyporeactivity is not clear. In this study we examined the influence of donor bone marrow infusion at the time of solid organ transplantation on the levels of chimerism and the outcome of transplants.