Fig. 2.

Donor-specific precursor frequency of CD8⁺ T cells but not of CD4⁺ T cells measured before transplantation discriminates between the group of patients who will experience acute cellular rejection episodes from the group without rejection. (a) Histograms show 5-,6-carboxyfluorescein diacetate succinimidyl ester (CFSE) dilution of alloreactive CD8⁺ T cells after 6 days' mixed lymphocyte culture (MLC) of a non-rejector and a rejector. Generations of divided cells were identified and the number of cells in each generation was used for calculation of the precursor frequency. (b) Precursor frequency of CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T cells after stimulation with donor-specific (dsp) or third-party cells from non-rejectors (NR; n = 22) and rejectors (R; n = 24) are shown. The data are presented as box-plots; the whiskers depict 10–90 percentile. (c) The influence of the number of human leucocyte antigen (HLA) class II mismatches (MM) on dsp CD4 precursor frequency (pf) (left) and HLA class I, respectively, class II mismatches on dsp CD8 precursor frequency (pf) (right). The mean ± standard error of the mean of rejectors (black symbol) and non-rejectors (open symbol) are shown.