Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Immunology, National Jewish Health and University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, CO 80206, USA.
Blood. 2011 Aug 4;118(5):1305-15. doi: 10.1182/blood-2011-01-331462. Epub 2011 May 4.
Females are more susceptible than males to many autoimmune diseases. The processes causing this phenomenon are incompletely understood. Here, we demonstrate that aged female mice acquire a previously uncharacterized population of B cells that we call age-associated B cells (ABCs) and that these cells express integrin α(X) chain (CD11c). This unexpected population also appears in young lupus-prone mice. On stimulation, CD11c(+) B cells, both from autoimmune-prone and healthy strains of mice, secrete autoantibodies, and depletion of these cells in vivo leads to reduction of autoreactive antibodies, suggesting that the cells might have a direct role in the development of autoimmunity. We have explored factors that contribute to appearance of ABCs and demonstrated that signaling through Toll-like receptor 7 is crucial for development of this B cell population. We were able to detect a similar population of B cells in the peripheral blood of some elderly women with autoimmune disease, suggesting that there may be parallels between the creation of ABC-like cells between mice and humans.
女性比男性更容易患许多自身免疫性疾病。导致这种现象的过程尚不完全清楚。在这里，我们证明老年雌性小鼠获得了一种以前未被描述的 B 细胞群体，我们称之为年龄相关 B 细胞（ABC），并且这些细胞表达整合素 α（X）链（CD11c）。这种意外的群体也出现在年轻的狼疮易感小鼠中。在刺激下，来自自身免疫倾向和健康品系的小鼠的 CD11c（+）B 细胞都会分泌自身抗体，体内耗尽这些细胞会导致自身反应性抗体减少，表明这些细胞可能在自身免疫的发展中具有直接作用。我们已经探索了导致 ABC 出现的因素，并证明 Toll 样受体 7 的信号传导对于这种 B 细胞群体的发展至关重要。我们能够在一些患有自身免疫性疾病的老年女性的外周血中检测到类似的 B 细胞群体，这表明在小鼠和人类之间可能存在类似 ABC 样细胞的形成。
