Department of Microbiology, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing 100191, PR China.
Virol J. 2010 Nov 12;7:310. doi: 10.1186/1743-422X-7-310.
Tight correlation between host circulating CD8+ T cell-mediated immune response and control of viral replication is classical characteristic of long-term HCV infection. CD8+ T cell maturation/activation markers are expected to be associated with viral replication and disease progression in chronic HCV infection. The aim of the present study was to explore novel markers on CD8+ T cells with ability to evaluate HCV viral replication and disease progression.
PBMCs were isolated from 37 chronic HCV-infected patients and 17 healthy controls. Distributed pattern of CD8+ T cells subsets and expression of PD-1, CD38, HLA-DR and CD127 were analyzed by flow cytometry. The correlation between expression of surface markers and HCV viral load or ALT was studied.
Declined naïve and increased TEMRA CD8+ T subsets were found in HCV-infected individuals compared with healthy controls. Percentage and MFI of PD-1, CD38 and HLA-DR on all CD8+ T cell subsets were higher in HCV-infected patients than healthy controls. In contrast, CD127 expression on CD8+ TCM showed an opposite trend as PD-1, CD38 and HLA-DR did. In chronic HCV infection, MFI of PD-1 on CD8+ TEM (p < 0.0001) and TEMRA (p = 0.0015) was positively correlated with HCV viral load while HLA-DR expression on non-naive CD8+ T cell subsets (p < 0.05) was negatively correlated with HCV viral load.
PD-1 level on peripheral CD8+ TEM/TEMRA was highly correlated with HCV viral load in chronic HCV-infected patients, which made PD-1 a novel indicator to evaluate HCV replication and disease progression in chronic hepatitis C patients.
宿主循环 CD8+T 细胞介导的免疫反应与病毒复制的控制之间的紧密相关性是 HCV 长期感染的典型特征。CD8+T 细胞成熟/激活标志物有望与慢性 HCV 感染中的病毒复制和疾病进展相关。本研究旨在探索具有评估 HCV 病毒复制和疾病进展能力的 CD8+T 细胞新型标志物。
从 37 例慢性 HCV 感染患者和 17 例健康对照者中分离 PBMCs。通过流式细胞术分析 CD8+T 细胞亚群的分布模式和 PD-1、CD38、HLA-DR 和 CD127 的表达。研究表面标志物的表达与 HCV 病毒载量或 ALT 的相关性。
与健康对照者相比，HCV 感染者中幼稚和 TEMRA CD8+T 细胞亚群减少。HCV 感染者中所有 CD8+T 细胞亚群上 PD-1、CD38 和 HLA-DR 的百分比和 MFI 均高于健康对照者。相比之下，CD8+TCM 上 CD127 的表达与 PD-1、CD38 和 HLA-DR 的表达呈相反趋势。在慢性 HCV 感染中，CD8+TEM（p<0.0001）和 TEMRA（p=0.0015）上 PD-1 的 MFI 与 HCV 病毒载量呈正相关，而非幼稚 CD8+T 细胞亚群上 HLA-DR 的表达与 HCV 病毒载量呈负相关（p<0.05）。
慢性 HCV 感染患者外周血 CD8+TEM/TEMRA 上的 PD-1 水平与 HCV 病毒载量高度相关，这使 PD-1 成为评估慢性丙型肝炎患者 HCV 复制和疾病进展的新型指标。
