Association of graft survival with host response to hepatitis B infection in patients with kidney transplants.

We studied the relation of host response to hepatitis B infection before transplantation with survival of kidney grafts in 79 patients receiving 87 transplants. Antibody to hepatitis B surface antigen (anti-HBs) signaled early graft rejection (median survival congruent to two months), whereas hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) signaled delayed rejection (greater than 22 months). Patients with neither HBsAg nor anti-HBs had graft survival times (median congruent to 16 months) similar to the HBsAg carriers but significantly longer than the anti-HBs-positive patients (p less than 0.01). Similar results were observed when patients who received HLA-identical kidneys or had anti-HLA antibodies before transplantation were excluded. The highest probability of graft rejection was in patients with anti-HBs who received kidneys from male donors. The probability that such grafts would survive for four months was less than 20 per cent. HLA-nonidentical kidneys transplanted into patients with anti-HBs have a poor prognosis, whereas such grafts in HBsAg carriers have as good a prognosis as grafts in uninfected recipients.