| Dendritic cells (DC) play more than to present antigen for stimulatingimmune responses and they are now being increasingly investigated inclinical settings. Distinct DC subsets have been suggested to bepreprogrammed to direct either helper T-lymphocyte type 1 (T_H1) or T_H2development, although more recently different pathogen products or stimulihave been shown to render these DCs more flexible. To investigate theroles of DCs in vivo, using three-color flow cytometry, we enumerated theplasmacytoid DC (DC2) vs non-IFN-alpha producing myeloid DC (DC1)infresh peripheral blood from chronic hepatitis B patients without any anti-viral treatment and healthy controls. And simultaneously analyzed thesevalues related to CD4+ T_H numbers using interferon-γand interleukin-4Fastlmmune intracellular cytokine assays, respectively. We also evaluatedthese patients' percutaneous liver biopsy, blood routine, serum AlanineAminotransferase, as well as serum HBeAg and Anti-HBe byelectrochemiluminescence immunoassay (ECLIA). The percentage of DC2in patients with chronic hepatitis B were higher compared with the controls in peripheral blood in vivo, and T_H1subset appeared higher seemingly, butno-differentia in statistics. Furthermore, we divided patients entered ourstudy into two groups according to their serum HBeAg positive or negativeand compared the subset peripheral DCs and T_HS of these patients with thehealth volunteers. We found that in serum HBeAg negative patientsexhibited a significantly increase in the percentage of circulating DC2 andT_H1 in comparison to those of patients with serum HBeAg positive(p＜0.025) and health persons (p＜0.01), the later two groups showed lesssignificant different from each other. We concluded that DC2 played apivotal role to inhabit replication of HBV in the persons with chronichepatitis B through IFN, which might prime T_H1 response.
|
PDF Full Text Request