Alteration of chemokines after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and its clinical significance

The objective of this study was to analyze the relationship between some chemokines and the pathogenesis of GVHD and to find some biomarkers with diagnostic significance through observing and comparing the changes of some chemokine levels in samples from patients with or without aGVHD after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT). 26 plasma samples were obtained from 26 patients undergoing allo-HSCT at various time points after transplantation, of which 13 samples from patients with aGVHD were served as investigating group and 13 samples from patients without GVHD after Allo-HSCT were used as control group. The patient characteristics between the two groups were compared, the levels of 40 chemokines in these samples were detected by ELISA, the changes of chemokine levels in samples of 2 groups were analyzed by means of significance analysis microarray (SAM), clustering method and c-test. The results showed that there were significant differences in levels of 6 chemokines including HCC-1, MIF, IP-10, ITAC, TARC and NAP-2 between 2 groups, in which the level of MIF in plasma samples after HSCT was the highest, the difference of TARC level between 2 groups was over 10-fold. It is concluded that the level changes of chemokines mentioned above can be used as a indicator of GVHD presence, but their pathogenetic role in occurrence of aGVHD remains to be determined.PubMed01167-721