Comparative Assessment of Anti-HLA Antibodies Using Two Commercially Available Luminex-Based Assays

• Published in: Transplantation direct Vol. 3; no. 11; p. e218
• Main Authors: Clerkin, Kevin J., See, Sarah B., Farr, Maryjane A., Restaino, Susan W., Serban, Geo, Latif, Farhana, Li, Lingzhi, Colombo, Paolo C., Vlad, George, Ray, Bryan, Vasilescu, Elena R., Zorn, Emmanuel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Lippincott Williams & Wilkins 01-11-2017; Wolters Kluwer
• Subjects: Clinical Method
• ISSN: 2373-8731; 2373-8731
• DOI: 10.1097/TXD.0000000000000734

Allospecific anti-HLA antibodies (Abs) are associated with rejection of solid organ grafts. The 2 main kits to detect anti-HLA Ab in patient serum are commercialized by Immucor and One Lambda/ThermoFisher. We sought to compare the performance of both platforms.
Background-adjusted mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) values were used from both platforms to compare sera collected from 125 pretransplant and posttransplant heart and lung transplant recipients.
Most HLA class I (94.5%) and HLA class II (89%) Abs with moderate to high MFI titer (≥4000) were detected by both assays. A modest correlation was observed between MFI values obtained from the 2 assays for both class I (
= 0.3,
= 0.09,
< 0.0001) and class II Ab (
= 0.707,
= 0.5,
< 0.0001). Both assays detected anti-class I and II Ab that the other did not; however, no specific HLA allele was detected preferentially by either of the 2 assays. For a limited number of discrepant sera, dilution resulted in comparable reactivity profiles between the 2 platforms.
Immucor and One Lambda/ThermoFisher assays have a similar, albeit nonidentical, ability to detect anti-HLA Ab. Although the correlation between the assays was present, significant variances exist, some of which can be explained by a dilution-sensitive "prozone" effect.