Betjes MGH, et al. - Given a link of end-stage renal disease with premature ageing of the T cell immune system but the presence of substantial inter-individual variation, researchers investigated whether advanced immunological T cell ageing evaluated by peripheral T cell differentiation raises the long-term mortality risk post-renal transplantation. Prior to and in the first year post-transplantation, circulating T cells of 211 recipients of a kidney from a living donor were examined. Significantly lower absolute numbers of naive CD4⁺ and naive CD8⁺ T cells were identified in the deceased group before transplantation. The number of naive CD4⁺ T cells continued to be related to all-cause mortality in multivariate proportional hazard analysis. Findings revealed that a severe decline in circulating naïve T cells due to a reduction in recent thymic emigrants was highly related to all-cause death post-renal transplantation.