Pretreatment of donors with IL-18 attenuates acute GVHD mortality and morbidity.
BALB/c donor mice were injected intraperitoneally with 1 μg/mouse/d of IL-18 or the diluent (PBS) for 10 days. B6 mice were given 1300 cGy of TBI and received transplants of 5 × 106T-cell depleted BM cells and 2 × 106 T cells from either IL-18–treated (●, n = 10) or diluent-treated (▴, n = 10) BALB/c donors, as in “Materials and methods.” Syngeneic recipients (▪, n = 5) received similar transplants of cells from B6 donors. Data from 1 of 2 similar experiments is shown. (A) Percent survival after BMT (● vs ▴; **P < .001 by Wilcoxon rank test). (B) Animals were scored for clinical GVHD as described in “Materials and methods” (● vs ▴; *P < .05 by Mann-WhitneyU test from days 7 to 35). (C) B6 donors were injected with IL-18 or the diluent as above for 10 days. B6D2F1 mice were irradiated with 1300 cGy of TBI and received transplants, as described above, of cells from IL-18–treated (●, n = 10) or diluent-treated (▴, n = 10) B6 donors. Syngeneic recipients (▪, n = 4) received transplants of cells from B6D2F1 donors. Percent survival after BMT (● vs ▴; **P < .001 by Wilcoxon rank test). Data from 1 of 2 similar experiments is shown.
