Abstract

BONASTRE-JULIA, J.; LANDIN-JARILLO, L.  and  CASADO-PEREZ, C.. Cold preservation and chronic rejection, development of a rat hind limb transplantation model. Cir. plást. iberolatinoam. [online]. 2015, vol.41, n.1, pp.1-10. ISSN 1989-2055.  https://dx.doi.org/10.4321/S0376-78922015000100001.

Composite tissue allotransplantation has become a clinical reality nowadays, with more than 150 transplants performed in the last 15 years. Chronic allograft vasculopathy has been detected in 3 cases of composite tissue allotransplantation, being responsible of late graft failure. Decreased vascular lumina caused by intimal hyperplasia and constrictive remodeling of the adventitia, are the main histological features of this entity. Immune and not immune factors are related with the development of the vasculopathy, being cold damage between the later. We present the development of an experimental model of chronic allograft vasculopathy in a model of rat hind limb allotransplantation after 7 hours of cold ischemia at 4^oC, between Lewis Brown-Norway rats as donors and Wistar-Lewis rats as receptors. All animals were under low dose immunosuppression with cyclosporine A and were sacrificed 2 months post transplantation. The characteristic changes of chronic vasculopathy were found in the middle muscular and distal thirds at the histological analysis. Statistically differences were found when comparing the number of pathological small and medium size vessels of the middle and distal muscular thirds (P = 0,007 and 0,004 respectively). The present study establishes a reproducible experimental model of chronic allograft vasculopathy in composite tissue allotransplantation. We have verified the association of cold ischemia preservation and chronic vasculopathy at different vascular segments of the rat hind limb.

Keywords : Vascularized composite allotransplantation; Chronic rejection; Cold ischemia.

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