Kidney Transplant Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Kidney Transplant, including details on risks, prognosis, procedure, surgery, organ donation.

Humoral and cellular responses to influenza vaccination in human recipients naturally tolerant to a kidney allograft.

Ballet C, Roussey-Kesler G, Aubin JT, Brouard S, Giral M, Miqueu P, Louis S, van der Werf S, Soulillou JP

Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (I.N.S.E.R.M.), Unité 643: Immunointervention dans les Allo et xenotransplantations CHU-HOTEL DIEU, 30 Bd Jean Monnet, 44035 Nantes Cedex 01, France.

Rare kidney allograft recipients enjoy unaltered graft function years after interruption of their immunosuppressive treatment. To assess the extent to which this state of 'operational tolerance' (TOL) is specific to the graft and not the result of a global immunodeficiency, we analyzed the response of such patients following influenza vaccination. Hemagglutination inhibition titers and frequency of IFNgamma-secreting T cells were measured before 1 and 3 months after vaccination. The proportion of healthy volunteers (HV) responding to vaccine was significantly higher than that of immunosuppressed (IS) patients. Three 'TOL' patients presented a humoral response similar to that of HV, whereas the two others had a poor response, like the IS recipients. Although the small number of patients does not allow for definitive conclusions to be made, these data suggest that the status of tolerance may be heterogeneous, with some patients with a global immunodeficiency and others with an adapted response to vaccination.

Published 19 October 2006 in Am J Transplant, 6(11): 2796-801.
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