ABSTRACT
Experience with liver transplantation in different species has consistently shown that, in appropriate donor-recipient combinations, the liver behaves as an immunologically favored organ and survives where skin, renal, or cardiac allografts in the same combinations would be rejected. An effect of hepatic artery anastomosis on allogeneic orthotopic liver graft survival has been reported. They found that long-term survival of BN liver transplants in LEW recipients could only be achieved when the hepatic artery of donor liver and recipient were anastomosed, which increased survival from less than 22 days to over 90 days in 70% of recipients. A simple hypothesis to explain the variation in liver-graft survival in different strain combinations would be that the rejection/nonrejection phenotype of a particular strain is the result of its genetically determined level of immune response against the alloantigens of different donors.
