Instituto de Medicina Molecular, Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.
Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Norte - Hospital de Santa Maria, Lisboa, Portugal.
Clin Exp Immunol. 2019 Mar;195(3):302-304. doi: 10.1111/cei.13245. Epub 2019 Jan 10.
The identification that T follicular helper (Tfh) cells is critical for the emergence of germinal centre responses prompted the study of CXCR5-expressing CD4 T cell subsets in autoimmunity. However, circulating CXCR5-expressing T cells are heterogeneous by containing Forkhead box protein 3 (FoxP3) T follicular regulatory (Tfr) cells in addition to bona fide Tfh cells. Such heterogeneity may hamper the analysis of the contribution of specific follicular T cell subsets for autoimmune pathogenesis. Therefore, separate assessment of Tfh and Tfr populations offer greater opportunities for stratification of autoimmune patients, such as Sjögren's syndrome patients.
滤泡辅助性 T 细胞（Tfh）的鉴定对于生发中心反应的出现至关重要，这促使人们研究自身免疫中的 CXCR5 表达 CD4 T 细胞亚群。然而，循环中 CXCR5 表达的 T 细胞是异质的，除了真正的 Tfh 细胞外，还包含叉头框蛋白 3（FoxP3）T 滤泡调节（Tfr）细胞。这种异质性可能会阻碍对特定滤泡 T 细胞亚群在自身免疫发病机制中的作用的分析。因此，对 Tfh 和 Tfr 群体的单独评估为自身免疫患者（如干燥综合征患者）的分层提供了更多机会。
