Flow cytometric techniques are precious tools for investigating the activation of the humoral response against HLA antigens of the graft in renal transplantation. DS-Abs production has a worse impact on organ function and survival than ARj episodes. These findings represent further proof of the threat posed by DS-Abs on long-term graft function and draw attention to the need for a specific immunosuppressive therapy aimed at counteracting the different kinds of immune activation toward graft.

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SYNOPSIS Associations between HLA antigens and disease susceptibility have been investigated in several pathological conditions. Previous studies in selected migraine populations did not reveal any association with the HLA system. It is widely accepted that migraine is a disease with familial incidence. The genetic basis of migraine occurrence within 8 families with more than one member affected in two generations was studied. 60 individuals were studied; 33 of them were affected by migraine. HLA‐A,B,C,DR typing was performed in 41 individuals using the microlymphocytotoxicity technique of Terasaki. The studied pedigrees failed to identify a particular HLA antigen or HLA haplotype as a genetic marker of migraine. Among the total number of HLA typed individuals entering the study, Sib‐pair analysis was done in 20 pairs. The observed frequency of shared‐haplotypes differed from the expected frequency: 60% of compared pairs shared one haplotype (expected frequency 50%) and 30% shared two haplotypes (expected frequency 25%).

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Donor‐specific anti‐HLA antibodies were studied by cytotoxicity crossmatching (CTXM) and flow cytometry crossmatching (FCXM) in 117 kidney transplant candidates; the same study was carried out in 33 cadaver‐donor kidney recipients, during the first 3 post‐transplant months, for which donor cells were available. Pre‐transport evaluation showed that 82.9 % of subjects were CTXM negative/FCXM negative, 6.8 % of patients were positive in both tests, and 10.3 % were CTXM negative/FCCM positive. Post‐transplant monitoring for donor‐specific antibodies (Abs‐DS) showed that nine recipients (27.3 %) were FCXM positive; six of them were IgG + and three IgM +. In comparing these results with the clinical course, a significant association between FCXM IgG + and rejection episodes was observed (P < 0.01).