title: Influence of exhaustive exercise on the immune system in solid organ transplant recipients.
abstract: Prolonged exhaustive exercise has a great impact on the immune system of athletes and leads to a transient weakening of the immune system. A host of studies has documented changes of immune parameters in peripheral blood following exercise. Concerning the effect of exhaustive exercise in transplant recipients there is little knowledge at present. We analysed peripheral blood in healthy athletes and transplant recipients who participated in the "Euregio cycling tour 2009" before and immediately after they performed 81 km of cycling that included ascending more than 1800 m in altitude. A full blood count and an automated differential count as well as microarray analysis were performed before, immediately after and one day after exercise in 10 male patients carrying a kidney transplant and in 10 controls matched in age and gender. Comparing the absolute increase in neutrophils in these two groups, we detected that the relative increase in neutrophils was significantly smaller in transplant recipients compared to their corresponding controls after exhaustive exercise. While both groups were comparable in performance, microarray analysis revealed a markedly different pattern of gene expression in transplant recipients compared to their controls. From the 130 genes that were significantly upregulated in controls immediately after exercise, only 12 genes were also upregulated in transplant recipients. 64 different genes were upregulated in transplant recipients only. Our findings may be related to the immunosuppressive medication that the transplant recipients took and therefore it should also be discussed that regular exercise might reduce the need for immunosuppressive medication in transplant recipients.
authors.affiliation: Department of General Visceral and Transplant Surgery, University of Tuebingen, D-72076 Tuebingen, Germany.
authors.forename: Ingmar
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Königsrainer
authors.forename: Derek
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zieker
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Löffler
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bühler
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Walter
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Beckert
authors.forename: Jörg
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Glatzle
authors.forename: Hinnak
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Northoff
authors.forename: Silvio
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nadalin
authors.forename: Alfred
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Königsrainer
mesh_terms: D056352:Athletes; D001642:Bicycling; D015444:Exercise / Q000502:physiology*; D015870:Gene Expression; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D006801:Humans; D007107:Immune System / Q000502:physiology*; D016030:Kidney Transplantation; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D014180:Transplantation / Q000502:physiology*