Transplant Rejection
. The immune system recognizes and attacks anything different from the substances normally present within an individual, even substances that are only slightly different, such as transplanted tissues and organs (see Medical Transplantation ). When an organ is transplanted, the MHC of the donor organ is recognized as foreign and attacked by the recipient’s immune system. To minimize the chances of transplant rejection, physicians seek transplant donors who share as many MHC genes as possible with the transplant recipient. Even then, most transplant recipients are given drugs to suppress their immune response and prevent rejection of the transplant. If the transplanted tissue contains T lymphocytes from the donor, as in bone marrow transplants, these donor T lymphocytes may recognize the recipient’s tissues as foreign and attack them. Physicians can reduce or prevent this potentially fatal graft-versus-host (GVH) reaction by removing all mature T lymphocytes from the organ or tissue bef...