Predicting the risk of acute rejection in the first month of liver transplantation

Researchers at the Group of Autoimmunity and Transplantation IDIVAL participated in a Spanish multicenter study (Marqués de Valdecilla University Hospital, H. Universitario Virgen de la Arrixaca University Hospital 12 de Octubre and Hospital Clinic of Barcelona) where they demonstrate the usefulness of monitoring cytometric a flow immune system cells with immunoregulatory capacity, the central memory Tregs. These cells have a potent suppressive capacity more immune response effector.

The hypothesis of the work considered that these cells could change in the circulation of liver transplant patients in two post-transplant involving major cause of graft loss, re-infection by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and rejection episodes acute.

The results show the number of said regulatory T cells in the blood decreases transplanted reinfected HCV while these same cells increase in the blood of transplanted suffering acute rejection. Importantly, the work involves the effort of practical collaboration between four centers in the use of the methodology flow cytometry fully comparable with standard operating procedures and reagents equivalent guarantee high reproducibility efficient. The quantification of this cell population in blood is a technically complex method based on flow cytometry and, as the same article indicated in the Material and Methods, was tuned to work by the group of Valdecilla, which part of Dr. Lopez Hoyos and San Segundo , both by the Service Flow Cytometry and Cell Separation of IDIVAL. They also participate in the work Dr. Fábrega the Group of Gastroenterology of IDIVAL and Dr. Pedro Muñoz Cacho, who actively participated in the development of the formula proposed as a result of the study to monitor and predict the risk of acute rejection in the first month after transplant liver.