Time after Lung Transplantation Influence the Correlation between Acute Rejection and Frequency of Regulatory T Cells in Transbronchial Lung Biopsies

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• 作者：D. Krustrup¹ ; M. Iversen² ; C.B. Andersen¹
• 刊名：The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation
• 出版年：2013
• 出版时间：April, 2013
• 年：2013
• 卷：32
• 期：4_supp_S
• 页码：S216
• 全文大小：137 K

文摘

| Figures/TablesFigures/Tables

Purpose

Regulatory T lymphocytes (Tregs) play an important role in acute rejection after lung transplantation - pressumably inhibiting the immunologic response. However, the importance of time after transplantation on the Treg response needs further investigation. The purpose of this study is to assess whether the correlation between regulatory T cells and the degree of acute rejection changes over time.

Methods and Materials

A total of 227 biopsy samples from 58 lung transplanted patients in the surveillance follow-up programme were included. These comprised available biopsies obtained 0.5, 1, 3, 12 and 24 months after transplantation. The biopsies were scored for acute rejection according to the ISHLT criteria (A0-A4). The transcription factor FoxP3 was used as a specific immunohistochemical marker of Tregs on formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue. Results were expressed as the number of positive cells per square millimeter.

Results

For the 5 different time points studied, Spearman¡¯s rank correlation coefficient is shown in below. For the biopsies taken 0.5, 1 and 3 months after transplantation a significant correlation between Treg frequency and the degree of acute rejection was found for each time point (p=0.05, p<0.0001 and p=0.02 respectively), whereas none of the other time points studied showed a significant correlation.

Conclusions

Our data indicate that time after transplantation is an important parameter influencing the Treg response after lung transplantation. This observation is in keeping with other studies indicating a narrow therapeutic window for inducing tolerance by specifically targeting T-cells. The results also indirectly indicate that T-regs have an impact on chronic rejection and long term outcome.

Table 1
Time after transplantation (months)	0.5	1	3	12	24
Number of samples	46	49	50	46	36
Median rejection grade	1	1	0	0	0
Median number of Tregs/mm2	11.99	14.25	9.56	10.24
Spearman¡¯s rank corr. coeff.	0.29	0.59	0.34	?0.04	0.10