Bone marrow transplantation from unrelated donors is being used increasingly for the treatment of patients with leukaemia and other disorders of lymphohaemopoiesis. Selection of histocompatible unrelated bone marrow donors currently relies on serological HLA identity and negative mixed lymphocyte cultures (MLC) between potential donor-recipient pairs. Since serological HLA-DP typing is not feasible, we used the HLA-DPB1 oligonucleotide typing method to test whether the current selection procedure can also guarantee identity for HLA-DP. In 40 consecutive patients, one-third (62/193) of the serologically HLA-A, -B, -C, -DR and -DQ identical donors were judged as MLC negative (relative response below 5%) with the presumptive recipient. HLA-DPB1 oligonucleotide typing of the MLC negative donors revealed that only one-third of these (20/62) were also identical for DP. In the majority of the pairs, we found a DPB1 disparity. A difference in the graft-versus-host direction was seen in 25/62 cases in the host-versus-graft direction in 28/62 cases and in both directions in 29/62 cases. These data indicate that, in spite of the strict MLC criteria used, the current procedure did not guarantee complete MHC class II identity. Therefore oligotyping for DPB1 can improve matching for DP and should be introduced for typing of volunteers. We suspect that DP differences may contribute to the higher incidence of graft-versus-host disease or graft rejection in unrelated donor transplants.
