Aims: To prospectively investigate the preventive and therapeutic effect of immunoglobulin on infectious complications in DCD liver transplant recipients, and synthetically evaluate its influence on the episode of rejection and short-term prognosis.

Methods: 83 patients were divided into experimental group or control group randomly, and the former group received 7*5g IVIG infusions in the first week post-transplanted. No difference in immunosuppressive therapy, anti-HBV therapy and follow-up procedure between two groups. Immunoglobulin (IgG, IgA, IgM, C3, C4, etc.) level and infectious complications were regularly monitored.

Results: No significant difference in level of IgG, IgA, IgM, C3, C4, IgG4, [lambda]-chain and κ-chain was observed pre-transplanted and the first day post-transplanted. However, IVIG induction therapy resulted in upregulation of serum IgG levels within the first 28 days post-transplanted when compared with control group (P<0.05), but had no effect on the level of other monitored indexes. The supplement of immunoglobulin reduced the incidence of bacteremia (19.51% vs 42.86%, P=0.022), but it played no role in decreasing the incidence of infection in pulmonary, abdominal cavity, digestive tract and surgical incision. Moreover, there was no notable difference in the economic costs, episode of rejection and short-term prognosis between this two groups.

Conclusions:IVIG administration enhanced immunoglobulin levels in post-transplanted patients suffering from hypogammaglobulinemia, which could provide protective effects on them in the early stage.

CITATION INFORMATION: Yang A, Guo Z, Ju W, Chen Y, Han M, Wang X, Wang D, Ma Y, Hu A, Zhu X, He X. The Preventive and Therapeutic Effect of Immunoglobulin on Infectious Complications in Donation After Cardiac Death Liver Transplant Recipients: A Prospective Randomized Controlled Study. Am J Transplant. 2016;16 (suppl 3).

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