Does Cyclosporine Down Regulate IL-17 in Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy.docVIP

Open Journal of Organ Transplant Surgery, 2013, 3, 1-4 /10.4236/ojots.2013.31001 Published Online February 2013 (/journal/ojots) Does Cyclosporine Down Regulate IL-17 in Cardiac Allograft Vasculopathy?* Nandini Nair , Luciano Potena , Sandeep Kumar , Sudhiranjan Gupta , Enrique Gongora , 1 2 3 3 4 2 2 Federica Angeli , Paolo Romani 1 Department of Cardiology, Scott White Healthcare/Texas AM Health Science Center College of Medicine, Temple, USA Department of Cardiology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy Central Texas VA Health Care System/Texas AM Health Science Center College of Medicine, Temple, USA 2 3 4 Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Hahnemann University Hospital/Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia, USA Email: nanair@ Received December 11, 2012; revised January 15, 2013; accepted January 23, 2013 ABSTRACT Background: Cardiac allograft vasculopathy (CAV) is characterized by vascular inflammation and intimal proliferation which results in luminal stenosis and myocardial infarction. During vascular inflammation elaboration of several cyto- kines and differential expression of growth factors have been noted. CAV remains the major threat to long-term graft survival. CD4 and CD8 T-cell subsets play a significant role in the development of transplant rejection. Chronic trans- plant rejection often leads to development of CAV. A new CD4 effector cell subset that produces IL-17 (Th17) has been shown to be up-regulated in the murine system in the setting of CAV. This study assesses the level of IL-17 in cardiac transplant patients with and without CAV as compared to nontransplanted controls. Methods: Levels of IL-17, IL-6, MCP-1 were measured by ELISA in plasma of four nontransp