Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) suffer from high morbidity and mortality of cardiovascular and infectious disease and increased risk of all-cause mortality which is mainly attributed to the disturbed immune response. More and more evident indicated that T cell dysfunction was universal in ESRD. Recent evidence suggests uremia-related immune changes resemble to aging immune system, increasing immunological age of T cells by 20-30 years. As compared to an age-matched healthy control, ESRD patients present a lower thymic output of naïve T cells, a decline in the T-cell telomere length and an increase in the differentiation status towards the terminal differentiated memory phenotype with a large number of CD28-negative T cells. More importantly, these changes are strongly associated with a history of cardiovascular diseases and the occurrence of severe infectious episodes in this population, supporting the idea that T cell dysfunction is a critical feature in this population and will impact clinical outcomes profoundly. This study prospectively researched the predictive value of T cell dysfunction for all-cause mortality and clinical complication in hemodialysis (HD) patients.
Patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) suffer from high morbidity and mortality of cardiovascular and infectious disease and increased risk of all-cause mortality which is mainly attributed to the disturbed immune response. More and more evident indicated that T cell dysfunction was universal in ESRD. However, few studies clarified the association of T cell dysfunction and clinical outcomes. This study is aim to explore valuable markers of T cell dysfunction predicting bad clinical outcomes including death, cardiovascular disease, infection and tumor. Hopefully, these finding will provide foundation for further mechanism research and better therapeutic options for ESRD patients in the future.