No biopsy required: Blood test could spot signs of rejection in heart transplant recipients
Researchers may have found a new way to evaluate heart transplant recipients for signs of organ rejection—and instead of an invasive biopsy, it involves a simple blood test.
The group shared its research in Transplantation, highlighting the potential benefits of this discovery.[1]
“Our patients have few options for surveillance for rejection,” co-author Sounok Sen, MD, medical director of the Yale Cardiac Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support Program and assistant professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine, said in a statement. “The gold standard has always been a heart biopsy, but we always wondered if there were better ways to do this that didn’t require invasive procedures.”
“For the past 50-plus years, ever since we started doing heart transplants, there has been a drive to replace repeated heart biopsies because it’s not practical to keep doing invasive biopsy procedure after procedure,” added principal investigator Prashanth Vallabhajosyula, MD, MS, associate professor of surgery at Yale School of Medicine. “Having a noninvasive molecular window into what the cells of interest are doing with regards to the transplanted organ is critical.”
The study focused on blood samples from 12 heart transplant recipients before and after their transplant procedures. Sen, Vallabhajosyula and colleagues examined the T cells of these patients, as well as B cells and the donated heart. When patients experienced acute cellular rejection episodes, the group found, there was an increase of certain biomarkers that can potentially be tracked using straightforward blood tests.
“This is the first time that we’ve had a noninvasive method to delineate between the different types of rejection that may occur within the heart,” Sen said.
The specialists involved with this research are just getting started. Their next study, which is already underway, will focus on biopsy samples from 100 different heart transplant recipients. This step should help the group learn much more about the potential of evaluating patients for signs of rejection using a noninvasive blood test.
The National Institutes of Health and Yale University both helped fund this analysis.
Click here to read the full study in Transplantation.
Michael has more than 19 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.