Comparison of several functional methods to evaluate the immune response on stable kidney transplant patients

Results: Measurement of intracellular ATP in CD4 + lymphocytes is able to differentiate immunosuppressed populations in renal transplant patients from health controls (242.30 ± 21.62 vs. 386.43 ± 25.12, p 0.0001). By contrary, there were no differences between controls and renal recipients when functional response was measured by MLR, PHA and anti-CD3 mAbs (2.48 ± 0.45 vs. 2.37 ± 0.41; 2.84 ± 0.76 vs. 2.37 ± 0.32; 2.32 ± 0.34 vs. 1.89 ± 0.38 respectively). In summary, our results show that the measurement of ATP in CD4 + lymphocytes gives more accurate information in comparison to the classical methods.