Correlation of T-Cell Subsets and Hypercholesterolemia of the Donor and Its Association with Acute Graft-versus-Host Disease

Background: acute graft-versus-host disease (agvhd) is an important cause of death following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-hsct). the association between cholesterol and agvhd was previously described potentially resulting from pro-inflammatory responses associated with hypercholesterolemia. the aim of this study was to correlate t-cell subsets in donor bone marrow (bm) samples with their levels of cholesterol and associate these results with recipients who developed agvhd and those who did not. materials and methods: a prospective study was performed in 39 donor samples. t-cell subsets were analyzed by flow cytometry. results: eleven (28%) donors had hypercholesterolemia. donor samples with hypercholesterolemia had less tregs compared to donors with normal levels of cholesterol (22.69 (iqr=30.6) cells/μl vs 52.62 (iqr=44.68) cells/μl, p=0.04). among all the cohort, agvhd was observed in 21%: 36% from donors with hypercholesterolemia versus 14% from donors with normal levels of cholesterol. conclusion: as we described the association between hypercholesterolemia and diminished tregs, our results might suggest that normalizing the levels of total cholesterol in the donor, prior performing allo-hsct, might be an effective approach to diminish the risk of the receptor to develop agvhd.