The greatest risk of rejection of a transplanted organ typically occurs during the first twenty-four hours and the first month and a half since the intervention occurred. The existing signs are indirect and the same date, the only way that doctors had to determine unequivocally rejected consisted of biopsy, a technique annoying and carries certain risks, such as bleeding or the appearance of body bruises on it.

This is why it has taken a group of researchers from the School of Medicine Stanford University to find an alternative to biopsy in patients who have undergone a transplant.

The technique chosen by these scientists has been the immunoassay technique called ELISA (English acronym Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) technique already used in many hospitals for the diagnosis of some diseases.

Thus, only needed a small blood sample to determine the patient’s risk to suffer rejection. The researchers behind the study chose several different organ transplant patients, in order to find molecular markers in the blood that vary in those who may suffer rejection and found three proteins. Assay sensitivity is 89%.

The authors of the study published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology warn that despite the good results obtained in his essay, will require further research to validate these data in a more global.