Tumor Necrosis Factor (Tnf) Genetic Polymorphisms Correlate With Infections After Liver Transplantation

The effect of recipient cytokine gene polymorphism on cardiac transplantation outcome

“…Two recent papers have shown such an association between the TNF-␣ high polymorphism and a lower incidence of infection after both liver transplantation and renal transplantation, supporting this hypothesis [27,28]. The present study showed a trend for patients with the TNF-␣ high genotype to have fewer infections in the first year after transplantation.…”

“…The results of these in vitro studies led to the hypothesis that genetically determined variation in an individual's ability to make cytokines could affect the clinical course of disease. There is evidence that this is the case in settings such as transplantation [9, 14 -18, 26], infectious disease [11,19,24,25,[27][28][29], and autoimmune disease [12, 13, 20 -22].…”

Intragraft cytokine expression in heart transplants with mild or no histological rejection

“…It is noteworthy that TNF‐α production is under genetic control and it has been reported that high producer patients are at a higher risk of developing early rejection episodes of heart transplants than low producers [36,37]. This finding has also been observed in other types of grafts, mainly in renal transplants [38,39]. However, other authors have reported that the serum levels of TNF‐α were not predictive of rejection [40,41], have find a weak in situ expression of TNF‐α[42], or its expression is constitutive [43].…”

Polymorphisms in Immunoregulatory Genes

“…[56,60] The TNFd microsatellite, a GA repeat sequence downstream of TNFA associated with high levels of TNFα in vitro, has been linked to both cardiac transplant rejection and also severity of graft-versus-host disease following allogeneic bone marrow transplantation. [54,63] These latter findings, however, were based on small numbers and have yet to be confirmed. Individuals positive for an NcoI site in intron 1 of the TNFB gene (A249G polymorphism) appear to produce lower levels of TNFα than other individuals.…”