No abstract

Patients with early rejection of kidney allografts associated with anti-donor antibodies have been randomized in two groups which received, respectively, either the conventional corticosteroid/azathioprine treatment or extensive plasma exchanges (PE) plus the conventional treatment. Data on the monitoring of anti-T or anti-B donor lymphocytes, as well as anti-panel or autoreactive cytotoxicity are described. Although the titer of anti-donor antibodies is decreased in the PE-treated group there is no sustained improvement of graft function compared to the control group. Thus, in these stereotyped rejection episodes, which are likely to be antibody mediated, there is no significant effect of extensive and early plasma exchange.

No abstract

Numerical chromosomal aberrations in sperm are considered to be a major factor in infertility, early pregnancy loss and syndromes with developmental and cognitive disabilities in mammals, including primates. Despite numerous studies in human and farm animals, the incidence and importance of sperm aneuploidies in non-human primate remains mostly undetermined. Here we investigated the incidence and distribution of sperm aneuploidy in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), the species closest to human. We identify evolutionary conserved DNA sequences in human and chimpanzee and selected homologous sub-telomeric regions for all chromosomes to build custom probes and perform sperm-FISH analysis on more than 10,000 sperm nuclei per chromosome. Chimpanzee mean autosomal disomy rate was 0.057 ± 0.02%, gonosomes disomy rate was 0.198% and the total disomy rate was 1.497%. The proportion of X or Y gametes was respectively 49.94% and 50.06% for a ratio of 1.002 and diploidy rate was 0.053%. Our data provide for the first time an overview of aneuploidy in non-human primate sperm and shed new insights into the issues of aneuploidy origins and mechanisms.