The Immune System, Transplant Rejection and Psychological Stress

Leukocyte and lymphocyte migration (trafficking) from peripheral blood into affected tissues is an essential component of the inflammatory reaction to virtually all forms of injury and is an important factor in the development of many diseases. Advances in the past few years have highlighted the central role of a family of chemotactic cytokines called chemokines in this process. Cellular adhesion molecules (CAMs) have also been important in allograft rejection as these molecules allow protein receptor binding. Chemokines help to control the selective migration and activation of inflammatory cells into the injured tissue/ graft. Chemokines and their corresponding receptor ligands migrate during inflammation. This work explores retrospective literature in psychological stress, chemokine receptors, cellular adhesion molecules, Immunosuppression Therapies (ISTs) and Mono-Clonal Antibodies (MAbs) to better understand Acute Allograft Rejection (AAR). This work also proposes a pre-transplant criteria.