The Prevalence Of Th17 Cells In Patients With Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Objective At present, the chemotherapy is one of the most common method for the patients with acute myeloid leukemia(AML), portion of them could achieve remission. But the issue of the lower remission rate and the multidrug resistant is generally present. However, recent studies suggest an important rule of tumor evasion and immunological tolerance on tumor progression. Recently, a new member of the CD4+ effector T-cell family(Th17 cells) has substantially advanced our understanding of T cell-mediated immunity. New insights suggest Treg cells and Th17 cells have been described as two distinct subsets from Th1 and Th2 cells and have the opposite effects. Activated T cells can be silenced through the action of Treg cells, Treg cells can strongly suppress IL-2 production and proliferation of antigen-specific T cells.In a study by Wang X et al. the level of Treg cells in patients with AML was significantly higher than healthy donors.Dueing to the opposite effects of Th17/Treg in differentiation, to assess whether the level of Th17 cells in patients'immunogical microenvironment with AML was depressed, we detected the proportion of Th17 cells in the peripheral blood of the patients suffering from AML, and evaluated the potential association of Th17 cells with AML.Methods The cytokine such as IL-17, TGF-β1 in the peripheral blood of three groups of people (the patients with AML before therapy, the patients with AML who achieved complete remission(CR) and the healthy donors) were measured by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA).The proportion of Th17 cells of each group was evaluated by flow cytometry. The level of IL-17mRNA of each group was examined by reverse transcription-PCR(RT-PCR).Results The percentage of Th17 cells and the level of IL-17, IL-17mRNA in the patients with AML before therapy and the patients with AML who achieved complete remission(CR) was significantly lower than that of the healthy donors. Moreover, the percentage of Th17 cells and the level of IL-17, IL-17mRNA in the patients with AML before therapy was lower than that of the patients with AML who achieved complete remission(CR).But the level of TGF-β1 in the patients with AML before therapy and the patients with AML who achieved complete remission(CR) was significantly higher than that of the healthy donors. However, the level of TGF-β1 in the patients with AML before therapy was higher than that of the patients with AML who achieved complete remission(CR).Conclusion Th17 cells might be negatively correlated with the AML, which indicated the degraded level of Th17 cells might be one of the important reasons for anti-tumor immunosuppression in AML. In addition, the overexpression of TGF-β1 in the patients with AML might suppressed the differentiation of Th17 cells.