Increased Expression of the Lymphocyte Early Activation Marker Cd69 in Peripheral Blood Correlates With Histologic Evidence of Cardiac Allograft Rejection1

Abstract

Measurement of the expression of the early activation marker CD69 in peripheral blood lymphocytes by flow cytometry may provide a noninvasive means of assessing immune activation and possible rejection in cardiac transplant recipients.

Heightened Peripheral Blood Lymphocyte CD69 Expression is Neither Sensitive nor Specific as a Noninvasive Diagnostic Test for Renal Allograft Rejection

“…The lack of correlation between CD69 expression and rejection observed in our study contrasts with a recent report in heart allograft recipients in which heightened expression of CD69 in peripheral blood lymphocytes was observed in patients with more severe types of rejection detected in surveillance cardiac biopsies (10). A similar correlation was recently reported in abstract form in renal transplant patients with clinical rejection episodes (11).…”

“…In a concurrent assay, a CD3 ϩ lymphocyte purity of Ն98% of these gated populations was confirmed with co-staining of a CD3 PE IgG1 antibody (Becton Dickinson). The percentage of CD4 ϩ and CD8 ϩ lymphocytes expressing CD69 (i.e., CD4 ϩ 69 ϩ and CD8 ϩ 69 ϩ ) were determined as described previously (10). That is, the fluorescence staining intensity of the IgG1 PE isotype control for CD69 was first determined for CD4 ϩ and CD8 ϩ lymphocytes for each patient sample, immediately after which the percentage of CD4 ϩ and CD8 ϩ lymphocytes displaying CD69 PE IgG1 fluorescence greater than the cutoff intensity determined by the isotype control was considered to be the %CD4 ϩ 69 ϩ and %CD8 ϩ 69 ϩ .…”

“…Recently, two groups have reported that heightened peripheral blood lymphocyte (PBL) expression of the cell surface molecule CD69 correlates with the diagnosis of acute renal and cardiac allograft rejection (10,11). CD69 is a C-type lectin expressed on T lymphocytes and natural killer cells and is one of the earliest surface molecules expressed upon T cell activation (12).…”

Schädigung respiratorischer Epithelzellen nach allogener Stammzelltransplantation in einem Zellkulturmodell der Graft versus Host Reaktion

“…Die Expressionssteigerung der Marker CD25, CD30, CD69 und HLA-DR ist dabei besonders hervorzuheben, da sie mit Abstoßungsreaktionen bzw. allogener Aktivierung in Zusammenhang gebracht werden [95,96,97,38,98].…”

Monitoring of cellular biomarkers expression in stimulated peripheral T lymphocytes and liver transplant outcome

“…Moreover, other authors phenotyped the lymphocyte infiltrate in the endomyocardium of human rejecting heart allografts as CD69 + CD8 + , suggesting that CD69 is relevant to the CD8 + cell-mediated graft rejection events [12]. Other authors correlated a higher expression of CD69 in CD4 as well as CD8 peripheral T cells with histologic evidences of cardiac allograft rejection [13]. Whilst these studies were focused on the expression of these markers only during acute rejection episodes, our results go one step forward not only observing higher levels in TR suffering acute rejection, but also proposing these surface biomarkers as predictive for acute rejection as well as monitoring the allo-response against the graft within the first PT.…”