Tanaka Koichi, Ozawa Kazue, Teramukai Satoshi, Takada Yasutsugu, Egawa Hiroto, Kaihara Satoshi, Fujimoto Yasuhiro, Ogura Yasuhiro, Kasahara Mureo, Ono Masako, Sato Hiroshi, Takai Kenji, Fukushima Masanori, Minato Nagahiro
Department of Transplantation and Immunology, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Liver Transpl. 2006 May;12(5):792-800. doi: 10.1002/lt.20705.
The primed status of T cells is markedly different among liver transplant recipients, due to a lifetime of antigen exposure and reduced thymopoiesis by aging, and diseases. This study aims to characterize the preoperative immunological status of CD8+ T cell subpopulations and relate it to the outcome for liver transplant recipients. We classified 112 liver transplant recipients into 5 groups, based on hierarchical clustering of the CD8+CD45 isoform proportion of T cells. In Groups I and II (pediatric), the naive T cell proportion was more than 50%. In adult recipients, Group III was characterized by a naive T cell proportion of 50%, Group IV had the greatest effector/memory T cells (EM), and Group V had the greatest proportion of effector T cells. In Groups IV and V, the effector T cell proportion was considerably higher, and was accompanied by marked downregulation of the CD27+CD28+ subsets and upregulation of interferon gamma (IFN)-gamma, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and perforin expression. Group V recipients tended to be complicated postoperatively, with a significantly reduced survival rate (1 yr, 66.8%) and markedly reduced Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status.
