Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF TRANSPLANTATION
Volume 5, Issue 7, Pages 1764-1771Publisher
BLACKWELL PUBLISHING
DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-6143.2005.00924.x
Keywords
homeostatic proliferation; kidney transplantation; T cell reconstitution; thymus function
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Little is known about thymus function in transplant patients. Until recently, the phenotype of T cells that recently emigrated the thymus was unknown. Now it has been demonstrated that CD4(+) recent thymus emigrants coexpress CD31 and CD45RA. Here, we investigated whether uremia and immunosuppression influence CD31(+) CD45RA(+) Th cells before and after kidney transplantation, respectively. Forty-eight renal transplant patients were included receiving either standard triple/quadruple (n = 35) immunosuppression, OKT-3 induction (n = 7) or FTY-720 (n = 6), respectively. Peripheral CD31(+) CD45RA(+) Th cells were quantified flowcytometrically before and at week 1, 4, 12 and 24 post-transplantation. Thirty-nine healthy adults served as controls. CD31(+) CD45RA(+) Th cells correlated inversely with age in patients and controls and were comparable in patients before transplantation and age-matched controls. Importantly, CD31(+) CD45RA(+) Th cell frequencies remained stable during 6 months post-transplantation. In conclusion, CD31(+) CD45RA(+) Th cells are not significantly altered by uremia before and during 6 months of immunosuppressive therapy after kidney transplantation. Implications for thymus function are discussed.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available