Suppressor T cells in rats with prolonged cardiac allograft survival after treatment with cyclosporine.

DA rats treated with cyclosporine for 2 weeks after being grafted with an RT1-incompatible PVG heart graft did not reject the graft and developed a state of specific unresponsiveness to graft antigens. The cellular mechanisms maintaining this state of unresponsiveness were studied by testing the capacity of lymphocytes from these animals to effect or inhibit graft rejection in irradiated grafted hosts. Whole lymph node and spleen cell populations, and the T cell subpopulation separated from the latter, failed to restore the rejection of PVG hearts in irradiated DA recipients but restored third-party Wistar-Furth (W/F) rejection. Both whole spleen cells and the splenic T cell subpopulation had the capacity to suppress the ability of normal DA lymphocytes to cause graft rejection. Suppression was not dependent upon a state of chimerism in grafted cyclosporine -treated animals, and was not associated with any measurable alterations in the proportion of cytotoxic/suppressor T cells in lymphoid tissues. These studies show that the state of specific unresponsiveness that follows the treatment of heart grafted rats with cyclosporine is dependent, in part, upon active suppression that is induced or mediated by T lymphocytes. Many features of the immune reactivity of cyclosporine -treated grafted rats support the hypothesis that the mechanism of specific suppression in these animals is akin to that of enhancement, rather than to that of transplantation tolerance induced in neonatal rats.