Am. J. Respir. Crit. Care Med., Vol 151, No. 6, Jun 1995, 1974-1980.
Mucosal T-lymphocytes in central airways of lung transplant recipients
M Fournier, J Igual, O Groussard, H Mal, C Sleiman, JP Duchatelle, O Raffy, G Jebrak, C Luzerne-Zedda and B Andreassian
Service de Pneumologie et Reanimation, Hopital Beaujon, Clichy, France.
The immunohistochemical profile of mucosal lymphocytes was investigated in
the central airways of lung transplant recipients. Bronchial and
transbronchial biopsies (BB and TBB, respectively) and bronchoalveolar
lavage for culture of bacteria and viruses were performed during a
fibroscopic procedure in patients without evidence of chronic rejection, 3
to 10 mo after surgery. Analysis was restricted to samples without
concurrent airway infection: 23 pairs of BB and TBB from 18 transplant
recipients were analyzed. An immunohistochemical technique was used to
identify and score mucosal cells that reacted with monoclonal antibodies
against CD4, CD8, CD45-Ro (memory T-cells), and HLA-DR molecules. The same
procedure was applied in nine nonsmoking control subjects (NS group). Data
from transplant recipients were allocated to R+ (n = 11) or R- groups (n =
12), depending on the presence or absence of histologic evidence of acute
rejection on TBB. A statistically significant depletion of every
immunoreactive cell subset was observed in the R+ and the R- groups, but
not in the NS group. Conversely, no significant difference for either score
of immunoreactive cells were found between R+ and R- groups. The
immunosuppressive regimen is suspected to play to play a major role in this
depletion of bronchial mucosal T-cells. The acute lung rejection process
does not appear to affect concurrently the immunohistochemical profile of
immunoreactive cells in the bronchial mucosa.
