Influence of myeloablative and nonmyeloablative preparative regimen on the levels of Th1/Th2 cytokines in acute graft-versus-host disease after rat allogeneic bone marrow transplantation

Objective To study the influence of myeloablative and nonmyeloablative preparative regimen on the levels of Th1/Th2 cytokines and the severity of aGVHD.Methods Receptor SD rats were randomized to four groups of A,B,C and D. A and B nonmyeloablative groups received total body irradiation(TBI) 2.0Gy. C and D myeloablative groups received TBI 6.0Gy.Four hours after TBI,B and D rats were injected with donor bone marrow cells as test groups.A and C rats were injected with normal saline as control groups.After transplantation,serum concentrations of IFN-γ,IL-2,IL-4,IL-10 in different phases were measured by ELISA.Results After transplantation,serum concentrations of IFN-γ,IL-2,IL-4,IL-10 in all groups increased to different degrees.Among all groups,the peaks of cytokines were in the order of group Dgroup Cgroup A.The differences of peaks of cytokines among all four groups were significant(P0.05). The difference of the median clinic aGVHD scores between group B and D was significant(P0.05). The difference of liver and colon pathological scores between group B and D was significant(P0.05).Conclusion The influence of nonmyeloablative preparative regimen on the levels of Th1/Th2 cytokines and the severity of aGVHD was much lower than that of myeloablative preparative regimen.