Increased Survival of Renal Homografts in Dogs After Injection of Graft Donor Blood

Allogeneic kidney grafts functioned for an average of 29.2 ± 10.9 days (controls 8.1 ± 1.3 days) in dogs conditioned by pretreatment with 2 cc s.c. injections of donor blood 10 and 5 days prior to grafting. When the recipients were given continued injections of donor blood after transplantation, survival of the kidneys was prolonged only to 16.3 ± 5.7 days. The conditioned recipients showed marked lymphatic depletion of all the nodes and the spleen; the thymus, however, was spared.