*Purpose: Role of circulating antibodies (Abs) in graft injury outcomes of kidney transplant is reported by us and others. Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is known to contribute to graft injury and rejection in kidney transplantation. Alloantibodies against HLA antigens contribute to the graft injury and there is speculation there is a role of autoantibodies in graft outcome. We tested our hypothesis that presence or absence of a set of auto-antibodies is associated with CMV viremia.

*Methods: The study included 30 kidney transplant patients that included 4 CMV viremia, 15 acute rejection (AR), 11 stable grafts (STA), and 17 healthy control We used the ProtoArray Human Protein Microarray (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA) for this study to profile circulating Abs and followed manufacturer’s protocol to collect the data and normalization. Group analysis was done by comparing two sets of individual antibody level for every antigen present on the array. Differences in significance were displayed as P values, with <0.05 and >2 fold change considered as significant.

*Results: When compared to healthy normal controls we identified Abs against 10 human antigens (C17orf47, C18orf56, PON3, FFAR2, GK5, hypothetical protein MGC40579, CALML5, ATP9B, RECK, and CCNB1IP1) were increased. We also analyzed Abs increased before CMV onset by comparing pre-CMV viremia samples to CMV viremia samples which resulted in identification of increase in Abs against 8 human antigens (C18orf56, RETN, MGC46496, PON3, FFAR2 EPB41L5, CLCNKA, and CCNB1IP1). Of these, 5 Abs remain elevated at the time of CMV (C18orf56, RETN, PON3, FFAR2, and CCNB1 IP1). We cross examined the increased Abs in AR samples and observed the Abs to be specific to CMV infection.

*Conclusions: We have identified Abs that are elevated in CMV viremia cohort pre and post-viremia. This provides us with important hypotheses for research studying role of CMV viremia in kidney transplantation.

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