School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Department of Immunology, Isfahan, Iran.
Cellular and Molecular Research Center, Birjand University of Medical Sciences, Birjand, Iran.
Int Immunopharmacol. 2019 Jul;72:55-61. doi: 10.1016/j.intimp.2019.03.053. Epub 2019 Apr 5.
Vitamin D3 and progesterone (P4) both belong to steroid hormones. These hormones have effects on the function of each other in different ways. The immunomodulatory activity of vitamin D3 and P4 and their role in inducing maternal tolerance for fetus have been shown in various studies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of vitamin D3 on the expression of membrane progesterone receptors (mPRs) on CD4 T cells.
Naive CD4 T cells were isolated from peripheral blood of 38 healthy women of childbearing age. After stimulating by anti-CD3 and anti-CD28 monoclonal antibodies (mAb), these cells were exposed to either various concentrations of vitamin D3 or no exposure at all in a culture medium at 37 °C for 3 days. In the final stage, the mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) of mPRα and mPRβ were evaluated using polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies and several gating strategies on CD4 T cells.
Vitamin D3 significantly increased the expression of mPR α and mPR β on the surface of CD4 T cells (p ≤ 0.05).
The present study demonstrated the potential effect of vitamin D3 on increasing the expression of P4 receptors on CD4 T cells. This study shows a new aspect of correlation between vitamin D3 and P4 that may influence P4 performance. Therefore, our findings suggest that the appropriate level of this vitamin may affect the optimum P4 immunomodulatory activity during pregnancy.
维生素 D3 和孕酮（P4）都属于甾体激素。这些激素以不同的方式相互影响彼此的功能。维生素 D3 和 P4 的免疫调节活性及其在诱导母体对胎儿耐受中的作用已在各种研究中得到证实。本研究旨在评估维生素 D3 对 CD4 T 细胞表面膜孕激素受体（mPR）表达的影响。
从 38 名育龄健康女性的外周血中分离出幼稚 CD4 T 细胞。在抗 CD3 和抗 CD28 单克隆抗体（mAb）刺激后，这些细胞在 37°C 的培养基中暴露于不同浓度的维生素 D3 或根本不暴露于维生素 D3 3 天。在最后阶段，使用多克隆和单克隆抗体以及几种门控策略在 CD4 T 细胞上评估 mPRα 和 mPRβ 的平均荧光强度（MFI）。
维生素 D3 显著增加了 CD4 T 细胞表面 mPRα 和 mPRβ 的表达（p≤0.05）。
本研究证明了维生素 D3 对增加 CD4 T 细胞上 P4 受体表达的潜在影响。这项研究显示了维生素 D3 和 P4 之间的新关联，这可能会影响 P4 的性能。因此，我们的研究结果表明，这种维生素的适当水平可能会影响妊娠期间 P4 的最佳免疫调节活性。
