One-way mixed lymphocyte culture: differences between Chinese and Caucasian stimulator cells

In "standardized" one-way mixed lymphocyte cultures, a pool of blood lymphocytes from randomly chosen Chinese subjects was a significantly stronger stimulus to Caucasian responder lymphocytes than was a pool of allogeneic cells from Caucasians. In contrast, Chinese lymphocytes did not respond more strongly to Caucasian cells than to Chinese cells. This could not be explained by an inherent racial difference in the capacity of blood lymphocytes to undergo blastogenesis. The implications of these findings for organ transplantation and routine testing of cell-mediated immune function are discussed.