The Relationship Between Th17, Treg Cells And Cytokines With Chronic Hepatitis B Virus Infection

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is still a global disease which seriously affects human health. About 600 thousands people dead due to acute or chronic hepatitis B related complications each year. Previous studies showed that HBV does not cause liver cell damage directly, the liver injury main caused by cellular and humoral immune responses. The imbalance of Th1/Th2 ratio, performance for the dynamic changes of inflammatory factors including IL-10, IL-6, and kinds of autoimmune antibodies, maybe one reason of HBV infection persistent.We examined the expression of Treg and Th17 cells in the peripheral blood in patients with chronic HBV infection, found the levels were significantly increased, further subgroup analysis showed that the increase of the levels synchronized with the progression of HBV infection. Through the Spearman correlation analysis, we found that there was a linear positive correlation between Treg and Th17 cells. Similarly, Th17/Treg in patients with chronic HBV infection was significantly lower, subgroup analysis showed that between different stages, the ratio also have significant differences, suggesting that Treg/Th17 imbalance may play an important role in the chronicity of HBV infection.The study of the antiviral therapy by use interferon-a found that the expression of Treg and Th17 cells were changed during the treatment, the level of Treg cells showed a "V" shape, the proportion of Th-17 cells returned to normal, Th1 and Treg/TH17 performance had no difference with controls, the level of IL-17A expression was increased at first and reached the peak at 12 weeks, then decreased gradually. These data suggested that Th17 and Treg cells may played an important role in the progress of chronic hepatitis B virus infection. The level of change can be used as an auxiliary index to evaluate the antiviral efficacy and side effects of interferon.We performed cell experiments to confirm the expression of mir-23b was upregulated interferon-a and will be enhanced by IL-17A or TGF-β1.In summary, our study found that the expression of Treg and Th17 cells were increased by the progression of patients with chronic HBV infection, and accompanied with the imbalance of Treg/Th17 and the level of changes can be as an index of judge hepatitis B injury severity, also can be as judgment to interferon-a therapy in antiviral efficacy and side effects of auxiliary, IL-17A and TGF-β1 may have the effect to strengthen antiviral and slow the progression of cirrhosis, which will help to improve understanding of the immune response of interferon-a therapy.