Liver transplant transfers peanut allergy

After eating a meal with satay sauce in a Paris restaurant, a 22-year-old man who is allergic to peanuts suffers cardiac arrest, falls into a coma, and dies.

His liver and one kidney are transplanted into a 35-year-old man. The donor's pancreas and other kidney go to a 27-year-old woman.

Three months later, however, the male recipient-who has no previous allergy to peanuts-breaks out in a rash after eating some. Doctors treat him and then contact the woman, who reports no such episodes.

This strange case, reported in the 18 Sept 1997 New England Journal of Medicine, appears to be the first documented instance of a transplanted organ that imparted an allergy to its recipient. In earlier studies, transplanted bone marrow has been shown to transfer some allergies, apparently because bone marrow is rich in hematopoietic stem cells-immature cells whose daughters grow into red and white blood cells.

The new case draws attention to the liver, another source of these stem cells. Some of the donor's white blood cells had been activated by peanuts; when later exposed to peanuts in the recipient, the white blood cells created antibodies.

(From Science News, Vol. 152, 20 Sept 1997, p. 181.)