Incidence of acute renal transplant rejection in atopic individuals.

BACKGROUND AND DESIGN

It is been shown that atopic individuals can exhibit a T-cellular response (ie, "late-phase reaction") when exposed to relevant allergens and that they have more lymphocytes in an activated state. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate whether atopic individuals could mount more frequent and more severe episodes of acute renal transplant rejection, a phenomenon that is also mediated by T cells. A 6-month retrospective study was conducted comparing episodes of acute renal transplant rejection in nine atopic patients and nine nonatopic patients. The atopic patients used in this study all had allergic rhinitis. The hypothesis was that atopic individuals, who already have a proposed form of cell-mediated hypersensitivity to allergens, should also be able to experience more frequent and more severe episodes of acute allograft rejection.

RESULTS

The atopic patients in this study were found to have more frequent episodes of acute renal transplant rejection than the nonatopic group. In addition, they were found to have more severe episodes of rejection than the nonatopic group.

CONCLUSIONS

In our study, we observed that atopic individuals are more likely to exhibit acute rejection phenomena after renal transplant. Thus, our study presumes that the T-cellular hypersensitivity reactions observed in atopic individuals are analogous to the T-cell-mediated acute transplant rejection episode. The question of whether the same subset of T cells is active in these two reactions still needs to be explored, and the T cells in question need to be further characterized. In addition, the effect of immunosuppressive therapy on T-cell kinetics in atopic individuals needs to be further defined.