期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2018
卷号：115
期号：16
页码：4223-4227
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1720548115
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Patients after organ transplantation or with chronic, inflammatory autoimmune diseases require lifelong treatment with immunosuppressive drugs, which have toxic adverse effects. Recent insight into the neurobiology of placebo responses shows that associative conditioning procedures can be employed as placebo-induced dose reduction strategies in an immunopharmacological regimen. However, it is unclear whether learned immune responses can be produced in patient populations already receiving an immunosuppressive regimen. Thus, 30 renal transplant patients underwent a taste-immune conditioning paradigm, in which immunosuppressive drugs (unconditioned stimulus) were paired with a gustatory stimulus [conditioned stimulus (CS)] during the learning phase. During evocation phase, after patients were reexposed to the CS, T cell proliferative capacity was significantly reduced in comparison with the baseline kinetics of T cell functions under routine drug intake (ƞp2 = 0.34). These data demonstrate, proof-of-concept, that learned immunosuppressive placebo responses can be used as a supportive, placebo-based, dose-reduction strategy to improve treatment efficacy in an ongoing immunopharmacological regimen.
关键词：conditioning ; placebo ; immunosuppression ; T cells ; transplantation
