Clinical use of an immune monitoring panel in liver transplant recipients: A prospective, observational study.

Clinical use of an immune monitoring panel in liver transplant recipients: A prospective, observational study. Transpl Immunol. 2018 Nov 07;: Authors: Iovino L, Taddei R, Bindi ML, Morganti R, Ghinolfi D, Petrini M, Biancofiore G Abstract Immunosuppressive therapy greatly contributed to making liver transplantation the standard treatment for end-stage liver diseases. However, it remains difficult to predict and measure the efficacy of pharmacological immunosuppression. Therefore, we used a panel of standardized, commonly available, biomarkers with the aim to describe their changes in the first 3 weeks after the transplant procedure and assess if they may help therapeutic drug monitoring in better tailoring the dose of the immunosuppressive drugs. We prospectively studied 72 consecutive patients from the day of liver transplant (post-operative day #0) until the post-operative day #21. Leukocytes, neutrophils, lymphocytes (CD4+, CD8+), natural killer cells, monocytes, immunoglobulins and tacrolimus serum levels were measured on peripheral blood (at day 0, 3, 7, 14, 21 after surgery). Patients who developed infections showed significantly higher CD64+ monocytes on post operative day #7. IgG levels were lower on post operative day #3 among patients who later developed infections. We also found that a sharp decrease in IgA from post operative day #0 to 3 (-226 mg/dL in the ROC curve analysis) strongly correlates with the onset of infe...
Source: Transplant Immunology - Category: Transplant Surgery Authors: Tags: Transpl Immunol Source Type: research