Analysis of the peripheral T-cell repertoire in kidney transplant patients.

Journal article

The long-term stability of renal grafts depends on the absence of chronic rejection. As T cells play a key role in rejection processes, analyzing the T-cell repertoire may be useful for understanding graft function outcomes. We have therefore investigated the power of a new statistical tool, used to analyze the peripheral blood TCR repertoire, for determining immunological differences in a group of 229 stable renal transplant patients undergoing immunosuppression. Despite selecting the patients according to stringent criteria, the patients displayed heterogeneous T-cell repertoire usage, ranging from unbiased to highly selected TCR repertoires; a skewed TCR repertoire correlating with an increase in the CD8(+) /CD4(+) T-cell ratio. T-cell repertoire patterns were compared in patients with clinically opposing outcomes i.e. stable drug-free operationally tolerant recipients and patients with the "suspicious" form of humoral chronic rejection and were found significantly different, from polyclonal to highly selected TCR repertoires, respectively. Moreover, a selected TCR repertoire was found to positively correlate with the Banff score grade. Collectively, these data suggest that TCR repertoire categorization might be included in the calculation of a composite score for the follow-up of patients after kidney transplantation.

Authors: Miqueu, P; Degauque, N; Guillet, M; Giral, M; Ruiz, C

• Publication status: Published
• Journal: European journal of immunology
• Volume: 40
• Issue: 11
• Pages: 3280-3290
• Publication date: 2010-11-01
• DOI: 10.1002/eji.201040301
• EISSN: 1521-4141
• ISSN: 0014-2980
• Language: English
• Keywords: Middle Aged; Humans; Female; Immunosuppression; Follow-Up Studies; Male; Receptors, Antigen, T-Cell; Graft Rejection; T-Lymphocytes; Adult; Aged; Kidney Transplantation; CD4-CD8 Ratio; Transplantation, Homologous