Mechanisms of prior blood transfusion-cyclosporine-induced tolerance: a potential role for immune-cellular chimerism.

Skin allografts were not enhanced by prior conditioning of blood and CyA (5 or 10 mg/kg/d). However, when BM-CyA pretreatment was used, SA survival was significantly prolonged (CyA, 5 or 10 mg/kg/d). In examining differences between the BT-CyA and BM-CyA protocols, equivocal levels of donor microchimerism (1.5%) were found in the spleens of BT-CyA conditioned recipients at the time of transplantation (day 0). In contrast, highly significant levels of splenic donor chimerism (17.2%) developed at day 0 for the BM-CyA pretransplant recipients. Skin-allograft prolongation under the BM-CyA protocol implied that the effect may be linked to the existence of a donor-specific stem-cell population in the recipient animal.