Tooth retransplantation among matched and mismatched rhesus monkeys

Previous reports have suggested that histocompatibility matching increased the survival rate of tooth allografts in humans when transplants were evaluated by clinical and radiographic criteria. In this study, 26 rhesus monkeys were typed and matched for RhLA-A,B antigens, and pairs were subjected to mixed lymphocyte culture (MLC) analysis. Single primary incisor allografts were followed in two months by secondary incisor transplants from the same donors, and all grafts were removed three months later for histologic analysis. All transplants were rejected, and secondary grafts looked like primary grafts even though they had been in place two months less.