| News From Transplant Week of June 10, 2001 / Vol. 2 No. 23 |
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Report: Aspirin May Be Useful in Preventing Organ Rejection |
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University of Pittsburgh researchers report that aspirin has a profound effect on bone-marrow derived dendritic cells -- the powerful immune system cells that are responsible for initiating an immune response -- raising the question of whether aspirin might be useful in preventing organ rejection. The researchers, reporting in the Journal of Immunology, said aspirin in mouse models prevented the maturation of dendritic cells, and hence, their ability to signal other cells to attack. "While these results are very intriguing, it would be premature to advise patients to ingest large quantities of aspirin. For many transplant patients, this could be medically dangerous," warns lead author Holger Hackstein, MD, a visiting research fellow at the University of Pittsburgh's Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute. While researchers said the findings point to possible novel therapies for patients with autoimmune diseases as well as approaches that could induce tolerance in organ transplant recipients, they cautioned that further animal studies are needed to determine if aspirin can prevent organ rejection. They said they plan studies that will probe what role aspirin has in preventing dendritic cells from calling in the troops of T and B lymphocytes that directly attack transplanted organs. Other Sources: University of Pittsburgh |
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