ArticleJournal of immunological methods2008
Determination of thymic function directly from peripheral blood: a validated modification to an established method.
Article in Journal of immunological methods, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 31 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Thymus alterations and susceptibility to immune checkpoint inhibitor myocarditis.Nature medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Trial
- TREC dynamics as a biomarker of naive T-cell homeostasis in traumatic brain injury: a longitudinal analysis.Frontiers in medicine · 2026Article
- Ageing, immune fitness and cancer.Nature reviews. Cancer · 2025Review
- Development and validation of AI-based automatic segmentation and measurement of thymus on chest CT scans.BMC medical imaging · 2025Article
- Exploiting Signal Joint T Cell Receptor Excision Circle to Investigate the Impact of COVID-19 and Autoimmune Diseases on Age Prediction and Immunosenescence.Biomedicines · 2022Article
- Ecoimmunology in the field: Measuring multiple dimensions of immune function with minimally invasive, field-adapted techniques.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2022Review
- Blood levels of T-Cell Receptor Excision Circles (TRECs) provide an index of exposure to traumatic stress in mice and humans.Translational psychiatry · 2022Article
- Modern diagnostic capabilities of neonatal screening for primary immunodeficiencies in newborns.Clinical and experimental pediatrics · 2021Article
- Article
- Establishing Simultaneous T Cell Receptor Excision Circles (TREC) and K-Deleting Recombination Excision Circles (KREC) Quantification Assays and Laboratory Reference Intervals in Healthy Individuals of Different Age Groups in Hong Kong.Frontiers in immunology · 2020Article
- Clinical significance of T cell receptor excision circle (TREC) quantitation after allogenic HSCT.Blood research · 2019Article
- T cell receptor excision circles as a tool for evaluating thymic function in young children.Brazilian journal of medical and biological research = Revista brasileira de pesquisas medicas e biologica · 2019Article
- Influence of immunologic status on age prediction using signal joint T cell receptor excision circles.International journal of legal medicine · 2017Article
- Detection of newly produced T and B lymphocytes by digital PCR in blood stored dry on nylon flocked swabs.Journal of translational medicine · 2017Article
- T Cell Receptor Excision Circle (TREC) Monitoring after Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation; a Predictive Marker for Complications and Clinical Outcome.International journal of molecular sciences · 2016Review
- Increased THEMIS First Exon Usage in CD4+ T-Cells Is Associated with a Genotype that Is Protective against Multiple Sclerosis.PloS one · 2016Article
- Establishment and Maintenance of the Human Naïve CD4Frontiers in pediatrics · 2016Review
- Population Distributions of Thymic Function in Adults: Variation by Sociodemographic Characteristics and Health Status.Biodemography and social biology · 2016Article
- Juxtaposition of system dynamics and agent-based simulation for a case study in immunosenescence.PloS one · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The thymus contributes naïve, self MHC reactive, self tolerant T cells to the peripheral immune system throughout life, albeit with a log-linear decline with age. Quantification of thymic function is clinically relevant in the setting of lymphoablation, but a phenotypic marker distinguishing recent thymic emigrants from long lived naïve T cells remains elusive. T cell receptor excision circles (TREC) are present in thymocytes exiting the thymus and quantification of the most frequent of these, the deltarec-psiJalpha rearrangement has been widely used as a measure of recent thymic function. However, interpretation of results presented as TREC per cell has been criticised on the basis that extra-thymic cellular proliferation impacts on peripherally determined TREC numbers. TREC/ml is now considered to be more representative of thymic function than TREC/cell, especially where significant cellular proliferation occurs (e.g. during reconstitution following stem cell transplantation). Here we describe the validation of a novel variation to the established assay, directly quantifying TREC/ml from 300 microl whole blood. We show the assay to be reproducible, robust and stable longitudinally and we show equivalence of performance when compared with more standard assays. This assay particularly lends itself to the measurement of thymic function in children and where monitoring clinical variables is limited by tissue availability.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.