Sex hormones and transplantation tolerance

[Pirlouit (imported)]

a Google translation of a french article.

Sorry, got no time to improve translation.

link to the original article: http://www.techno-science.net/?onglet=news&news=9279

Sex hormones and transplantation tolerance

Getting rid of sex hormones to improve tolerance to transplants.

Drugs that suppress the production of sex hormones may help to induce tolerance to grafts in the elderly according to a new study in mice. This result suggests a new therapy based on hormones to improve transplant success.

Sex hormones are often implicated in the unpredictable behavior of adolescents, but hormonal differences are a less known in the changes they induce in older adults. For example, the immune system often responds poorly to an organ transplant, which facilitates infection and impairs the development of tolerance. Researchers believe that this weakness could come in part from the regression of the thymus, the main producer of T-cell This reduction often begins at puberty, when sex hormone levels begin to change rapidly.

Gaoping Zhao and colleagues now show that changing these levels by surgical castration of old mice can prevent the atrophy of the thymus and increase tolerance to the graft. More specifically, the team found that these mice now developing a tolerance to a transplanted heart, castration has a long-term engraftment and recovery of thymus cells. They then confirmed these results with a less brutal method of chemical manipulation of sex hormones produced by a chemotherapy called leuprolide.

It works by temporarily blocking the functioning of the gonads in humans and is used in the treatment of prostate cancer. The researchers found that the injection in mice caused effects which also facilitates the induction of tolerance to the graft. Although it is difficult to compare the age of mice and men, these results suggest that hormonal changes could improve the success of transplants in men of a certain age.