Characteristics And Clinical Significance Of Peripheral Blood Nk Cells Subsets In Patients With Chronic Hepatitis B In Different Immune Status

Objective: To study the expression of peripheral blood NK cells subset in patients with chronic hepatitis B virus infection during different immune status, and to investigate the relationship between the percentage of NK cell subsets, serum levels of HBV DNA and alanine aminotransferase (ALT).Methods: Forty-six chronic hepatitis B patients including 25 patients in immune tolerance phase (HBV-DNA>7 log10 copies/ml,ALT<40U/ L) and 21 patients in the immune clearance phase(HBV-DNA positive,ALT>40U/L) were enrolled for observation. Meanwhile, 10 healthy volunteers were taken as control. The expression of peripheral blood NK cells subsets were assessed by flow cytometry. Serum HBV DNA load was determined by real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and serum ALT levels were examined simultaneously.Result: The ratio of peripheral bloodCD56bright NK cells in healthy control group, immune-tolerant phase group and immune-clearance phase group were 0.5460.173,0.6470.294,0.8770.493 respectively. The proportion of CD56bright NK cells in immune-clearance phase group were markedly increased than the other groups and showed statistically significant (P<0.05). But no significant difference was found among these three groups in CD56dim NK cells. Correlation analysis showed peripheral blood CD56bright NK cells ratio and serum HBV DNA load in immune-tolerance phase group were negative correlation (P<0.05 ), but in immune-clearance phase group showed no such correlation.Conclusion: The increasing of peripheral blood CD56bright NK cells can be consider was one of index for immune clearance status in CHB patients; NK cells and its subsets maybe play an important immune regulation role in adaptive immunity response in the HBV clearance.