Thirty-seven patients were submitted to kidney transplantation after transfusion at 2-week intervals with 4-week stored blood from their potential donors. All patients and donors were typed for HLA-A-B and DR antigens. The patients were also tested for cytotoxic antibodies against donor antigens before each transfusion. The percentage of panel reactive antibodies (PRA) was determined against a selected panel of 30 cell donors before and after the transfusions. The patients were immunosuppressed with azathioprine and prednisone. Rejection crises were treated with methylprednisolone. The control group consisted of 23 patients who received grafts from an unrelated donor but who did not receive donor-specific pretransplant blood transfusion. The incidence and reversibility of rejection episodes, allograft loss caused by rejection, and patient and graft survival rates were determined for both groups. Non-parametric methods (chi-square and Fisher tests) were used for statistical analysis, with the level of significance set at P<0.05. The incidence and reversibility of rejection crises during the first 60 post-transplant days did not differ significantly between groups. The actuarial graft and patient survival rates at five years were 56% and 77%, respectively, for the treated group and 39.8% and 57.5% for the control group. Graft loss due to rejection was significantly higher in the untreated group (P = 0.0026) which also required more intense immunosuppression (P = 0.0001). We conclude that tranfusions using stored blood have the immunosuppressive effect of fresh blood transfusions without the risk of provoking a widespread formation of antibodies. In addition, this method permits a reduction of the immunosuppressive drugs during the process without impairing the adequate functioning of the renal graft.
Obesity is an increasing new pandemic. Currently more than 1.9 billion adults are overweight and at least 700 million of them are obese. Obesity is the result of a positive energy balance, which is conditioned by both environmental and genetic factors. Interestingly, individuals from similar ethnic-based ancestry communities, share both environmental and genetic features. Here, we described the relationship between indigenous Chilean groups and body mass Index. We conducted a Systematic review and Meta-analysis on Pubmed, LILACS, Scielo, Web of Science and Scopus databases. Our results showed that Indigenous Children present a lower BMI than Non-Indigenous Children. However, no difference within BMI was identified in adults. The gender affected the BMI as well. Aymara and Mapuche Women presented higher BMI than Indigenous Men. In the other hand, Indigenous people living in rural environment showed lower BMI than those whose live-in urban areas. Finally, Indigenous communities presented no difference in the risk to suffer Obesity when compared with Non-Indigenous communities. Here suggest that ethnicity could be a health determinant as well as a risk factor for obesity. Then, targeted prevention strategies with ethnic-based focus would be developed.
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