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Test Predicts Heart Transplant Rejection

Posted on: Saturday, 23 December 2006, 00:00 CST

A blood test may soon replace heart-muscle biopsies to predict rejection for heart transplant patients, says a panel of global transplant experts.

The test, called AlloMap, is a gene expression profiling (GEP) measure and was tested in the international CARGO (Cardiac Allograft Rejection Gene Expression Observational) Study.

AlloMap successfully identified patients who were not rejecting their new hearts in more than 99 percent of cases, researchers said.

Although the study data is being discussed in an editorial today, the results of the trial led to the test's becoming commercially available in January 2005, and it is currently offered by 40 transplant centers around the United States.

GEP testing is not only less invasive and less risky than biopsy, it ... raises suspicion of damage before any damage to the heart happens, said senior author Mario Deng of New York Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. Biopsy [only] records damage that has already occurred.

Deng said that around 30 percent of all heart transplant patients reject their new heart at least once in the first year after their transplant. When testing reveals organ rejection, the patient's immunosuppressive regimen is adjusted. AlloMap reveals patients who need this adjustment, but also identifies low-risk patients who can be managed using noninvasive methods and who may be successfully weaned off intense transplant immunosuppressive regimens that produce serious side effects.

The editorial on the CARGO results ia published in Friday's online edition of the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation.

Source: United Press International

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