The Variation Of The CD4～+CD25～+ Regulatory T Cells In The Blood Of Patients With Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Objective:It's well known that there is an abnormal immunologic function in the patients with systemic lupus erythematosus(SLE). Our objective is to evaluate the significance of this abnormality in the pathogenesis of the disease and investigate the clinical effect of autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (APBSCT) on SLE patients.Methods:We studied the levels of CD4~+CD25~+T cell,the subset of T lymphocytes (CD4~+,CD8~+,CD69~+,CD95~+ cell) and the cytokines: IL-2,INF-γ,IL-4,IL-10 and TGF-βin 25 SLE patients and 20 normal controls. The SLE patients were incipient and had not treated with glucocorticoid or immunodepressants before. Besides, 4 patients with refractory SLE were treated with APBSCT . We detected the levels of immune indexes mentioned above at different time: before mobilized; when stem cells were harvested; when hematopoietic reconstitution; and at 30 ,90 ,180 ,270 days after transplantation. All the samples were drawn from peripheral blood. Three-color flow cytometric analysis by the flow cytometry was used for the expression of CD4,CD8,CD25,CD69,CD95 ,and the levels of IL-2,INF-γ,IL-4,IL-10,TGF-βin the serum were detected by ELISA.Results:The results showed us that almost all of the indexes changed: the percentages of CD4~+ T lymphocytes from SLE group were lower than those from the normal control group (P =0.002), the ratios of CD4~+/CD8~+ were decreased in the SLE group (P=0.000), the percentages of CD4~+CD25~+ T lymphocytes from SLE group were also higher than those from the normal control group (P =0.002), the ratios of CD4+CD25+/CD4+ in SLE group were...