Fantini F, Valenti F, Mercuriali F, Marin F, Panajotopoulos N
Boll Ist Sieroter Milan. 1986;65(1):40-6.
We have studied NK activity against K562 cells of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from 83 patients affected with RA and searched for correlations with some clinical and laboratory parameters. In 65 patients T lymphocyte subsets were investigated by laser flow cytometry using monoclonal antibodies against OKT3, OKT4 and OKT8 antigens and in 25 patients also HNK-1+ cells were enumerated. NK activity in patients with RA resulted significantly decreased compared with controls (relative cytotoxic index = 0.68 +/- 0.74 versus 1.00 +/- 0.60, p less than 0.01). Decreased NK activity was not correlated with sex, age, duration of disease, ESR, haemoglobin, serum alpha-2-globulin, serum gamma-globulin, rheumatoid factor titre. The only clinical parameter correlated with decreased NK activity was the anatomical stage of the disease. NK activity depression resulted to be significantly correlated with OKT3+ cell percentage and at a lesser extent with OKT4+ and OKT8+ cell percentages. HNK-1+ cell percentage resulted only slightly reduced in patients with RA (13.1 +/- 8.7 versus 15.0 +/- 7.0) and there was only a modest correlation (p approximately equal to 0.10) between NK activity and HNK-1+ cell percentage. In order to elucidate the mechanisms of impaired NK activity in RA, experiments in vitro were carried out on PBMC of 23 patients to investigate the effects of the depletion of cells adherent to plastic, incubation with beta-interferon (1000 IU/ml) and incubation with indomethacin (10 -6M). Our data suggest that decreased NK activity in RA is mainly due to functional immaturity of NK cells and sometimes to inhibition by monocytes in some cases probably through prostaglandin release.
我们研究了83例类风湿关节炎（RA）患者外周血单个核细胞（PBMC）对K562细胞的自然杀伤（NK）活性，并寻找其与一些临床和实验室参数之间的相关性。对65例患者采用抗OKT3、OKT4和OKT8抗原的单克隆抗体，通过激光流式细胞术检测T淋巴细胞亚群；对25例患者还计数了HNK-1+细胞。结果显示，RA患者的NK活性与对照组相比显著降低（相对细胞毒性指数=0.68±0.74对1.00±0.60，p<0.01）。NK活性降低与性别、年龄、病程、红细胞沉降率（ESR）、血红蛋白、血清α2球蛋白、血清γ球蛋白、类风湿因子滴度均无相关性。与NK活性降低相关的唯一临床参数是疾病的解剖分期。NK活性降低与OKT3+细胞百分比显著相关，与OKT4+和OKT8+细胞百分比的相关性较小。RA患者的HNK-1+细胞百分比仅略有降低（13.1±8.7对15.0±7.0），NK活性与HNK-1+细胞百分比之间仅有适度相关性（p约等于0.10）。为阐明RA患者NK活性受损的机制，对23例患者的PBMC进行了体外实验，研究去除贴壁细胞、用β干扰素（1000 IU/ml）孵育以及用吲哚美辛（10-6M）孵育的效果。我们的数据表明，RA患者NK活性降低主要是由于NK细胞功能不成熟，在某些情况下可能是由于单核细胞通过释放前列腺素产生抑制作用。
