Researchers identify novel blood marker for predicting kidney transplant failure
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Monitoring the composition of CD8+ memory T cell subsets in the blood of kidney transplant recipients may help predict graft failure 8 years after transplant, according to recently published findings.
“As kidney transplantation remains the best therapeutic option for end-stage renal disease, and considering that current immunosuppression approaches inefficiently treat chronic rejection, favorable kidney graft survival requires the design of innovative preventive tools and therapeutics adapted to patients’ individual risks,” Lola Jacquemont, MD, PhD, of the Universite de Nantes in France, and colleagues wrote.
They argued that “a better understanding of the immune response resulting from chronic allogeneic stimulation is thus needed to [both] identify novel biomarkers that anticipate the risk of allograft injury and to provide new perspectives on the identification of new therapeutic targets to prolong allograft survival.”
After taking blood samples from 284 kidney transplant recipients 1 year after transplant, the researchers monitored CD8+ T cell subsets for a median of 8.3 years.
They found patients who had increased frequency of circulating terminally differentiated effector memory CD8+ cells at 1 year after transplant had an increased risk for graft failure during the follow-up period.
“The identification of at-risk kidney transplants is based on clinical metrics already measured in the standard of care of patients and on the quantification of blood subsets of CD8+ cells that could be easily transferable in the routine monitoring of kidney transplant recipients,” lead investigator on the study, Nicolas Degauque, PhD, said in a related press release. “The findings are important because early identification of at-risk kidney transplant recipients is critical to allow physicians to adapt their care by either increasing the frequency of patient monitoring or by introducing new therapeutics adapted to patients’ own risks.” – by Melissa J. Webb
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts