CD 44 as a Marker of Rejection in Patients with Post Liver Transplantation

Abstract

The first human orthotopic liver transplantation (LT) in Europe was performed by Sir Roy Calne in Cambridge in 1968, only one year after the first successful human liver transplantation reported by Thomas Starzl in the United States. Since then LT has evolved rapidly, becoming the standard therapy for acute and chronic liver failure of all aetiologies, with more than 80,000 procedures performed to date. Survival rates have improved significantly in the last 25 years, achieving rates of 96% and 71% at 1 and 10 years after LT respectively. The incidence of acute and chronic rejection has declined with improvement of immunosuppression regimens in liver transplant recipients. Acute cellular rejection (ACR) occurs in 15–25% of liver transplant recipients on Tacrolimus based immunosuppression regimens and generally improves with steroids in majority. ACR does not affect long term graft or patient survival in most of cases,As acute rejection usually responds well to treatment.