Researchers are studying new high-tech solutions to help improve medication adherence, self-management skills and overall health outcomes in transplant patients.

Recent studies suggest that mast cells function in a broad spectrum of immune and nonimmune responses, which may fundamentally change our perceptions about how peripheral tolerance or homeostasis is induced and maintained.

This editorial accompanies a paper describing a quality initiative in pediatric liver transplant and points out the pitfalls in quality-based guidelines both specific to the Englesbe report (page 2301) and generic in the field of quality.

The author describes the findings of Riella et al (see April issue) and Charbonnier et al (see page 2313) that CTLA4Ig worsens outcomes in regulatory T cell–dependent models of transplantation and discusses how these findings may impact future research and clinical use of related drugs.

An Australian collaborative report confirms that the regular use of donation-after-determination-of-cardiac-death lungs is both feasible and underutilized. See article by Levvey et al on page 2406.

This review highlights challenges to informed consent for both live kidney donors and live liver donors, and situates trends within broader policy contexts, ethical debates and avenues for future innovative research.

In organ transplant recipients, hepatitis E virus may be responsible for chronic hepatitis and extra-hepatic manifestations that can require specific antiviral therapy.

This consensus report reviews current epidemiology and diagnostic testing for the identification of latent and active tuberculosis infection in deceased and living organ transplant donors and provides recommendations for the management of transplant donors and recipients, as well as suggested areas for future research.

This viewpoint describes a multi-institutional quality collaborative approach within the Studies in Pediatric Liver Transplantation group and may represent a useful framework for physician-driven, broad-based quality improvement within transplantation. See editorial by Emond on page 2267.

The authors provide examples of several recent high-profile patient safety events linked to system and process weaknesses and suggest that the transplant community needs to embrace the implementation of evidence-based system and process improvements to effectively mitigate existing safety vulnerabilities.

The Spanish Quality Assurance Program applied to the process of donation after brain death represents a systematic, continuous and sustainable approach for a comprehensive assessment of this process, allowing for the estimation of the potential of donation, the analysis of performance and the identification of areas for improvement.

An analysis of changes made to the Brain Death Act in Israel accommodating requirements of the religious authorities reveals many obstacles to brain death determination.

Data provided by 49 patients who completed neuropsychological tests before and 6 months following lung transplantation suggest that verbal memory may improve after lung transplantation, whereas executive function may improve for younger patients but decline for older patients.

This study reviews three cases of acute antibody-mediated rejection in ABO-compatible liver transplant recipients treated with proteasome-inhibitor therapy (bortezomib) with remarkable clinical, immunologic and histologic outcomes.

Low-dose IL-2 therapy significantly expands functional CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ regulatory T cells in the peripheral blood with limited expansion of non-Treg cells in nonhuman primates.

The authors describe optimal approaches to tracheal revascularization, transplantation and withdrawal of immunosuppression in four tracheal allotransplantation cases.

Eculizumab is successful in treating severe antibody-mediated rejection in a kidney transplant recipient with CFHR1 deletion, highlighting a promising new treatment strategy for this condition and raising the possibility that CFHR1 deficiency may predispose or aggravate posttransplant antibody-mediated rejection.

The recommendation for timing of administration of varicella immune globulin to nonimmune immunosuppressed hosts who have a significant exposure has been extended from 4 to 10 days following exposure.