Effect of hyperbaric oxygen on acute graft-versus-host disease after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation

The objective of this study was to investigate the function and mechanism of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) in antagonizing acute graft-versus-host disease (aGVHD) and improving the rate of survival. The lethally irradiated C57BL/6 recipients were injected with bone marrow and lymphocyte of spleen from BALB/c donors and were treated with HBO, cyclosporine A (CsA) and methotrexate (MTX). T lymphocytes and subsets, adhesion molecules and cytokines were detected by flow cytometry, ELISA and RT-PCR respectively. The results showed that the survival rate in HBO group was much higher than that in allogenetic bone marrow transplantation (allo-BMT) group and CsA + MTX group; the numbers of CD3(+), CD4(+), CD8(+), CD4(+)CD11a(+), CD4(+)CD18(+), CD8(+)CD11a(+), CD8(+)CD18(+) lymphocytes in spleen were decreased markedly by HBO and CsA + MTX (p < 0.05); the levels of IL-2 and TNFalpha mRNA and their serum concentrations in HBO group were much lower than those in allo-BMT group but were higher than those in CsA + MTX group; the levels of IL-4 and IL-10 mRNA in HBO group were much higher than those in allo-BMT group and CsA + MTX group. It is concluded that HBO has more remarkable advantage in improving the rate of survival than CsA + MTX, its mechanism of anti-aGVHD is tightly correlated with the transform of T cell and its subsets and the expression of adhesion molecules and cytokines.