Activated IL-23/IL-17 pathway closely correlates with increased Foxp3 expression in livers of chronic hepatitis B patients

BMC Immunology

Research Article

Jijun Zhou¹  Qing Mao¹  Bing Ni²  Yi Tian²  Yuzhang Wu²  Yanhua Zheng²  Zemin Huang²  Qinghong Wang³ 

[1] Department of Infectious Diseases, Southwestern Hospital, Third Military Medical University, 400038, Chongqing, PR, China;Institute of Immunology, PLA, Third Military Medical University, 400038, Chongqing, PR, China;Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Child Development and Disorders, Pediatric Research Institute, Children's Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, 400014, Chongqing, PR, China;Institute of Immunology, PLA, Third Military Medical University, 400038, Chongqing, PR, China;

关键词: Treg;    Foxp3;    Th17;    IL-23;    IL-17;    Hepatitis B;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2172-12-25

 received in 2010-11-05, accepted in 2011-04-14,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundFoxp3 protein plays a critical role in mediating the inflammatory response and can inhibit the proinflammatory IL-23/IL-17 pathway. However, the molecular interplay of Foxp3 and the IL-23/IL-17 pathway in patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) remains unclear. To this end, we analyzed the expression patterns of Foxp3- and IL-23/IL-17 pathway-related proinflammatory cytokines in 39 patients with acute-on-chronic liver failure, 71 patients with CHB and 32 healthy controls.ResultsFoxp3 expression was found to be elevated in and mainly expressed by the CD4+ T cell sub-population of peripheral blood mononuclear cells and liver tissues of patients with hepatitis B. The intrahepatic expression of Foxp3 strongly correlated with the copies of HBV DNA and the concentration of surface antigen, HBsAg. IL-23/IL-17 pathway-related proinflammatory cytokines were also found to be significantly increased in patients' liver tissues, as compared to healthy controls. Moreover, Foxp3 expression was strikingly correlated with the production of these cytokines in liver tissues of CHB patients.ConclusionsThe closely-correlated increase of Foxp3 and IL-23/IL-17 pathway activity in HBV-infected livers suggests that the proinflammatory IL-23/IL-17 pathway had not been effectively suppressed by the host immune machinery, such as Treg (Foxp3) cells. Constitutive activation of the IL-23/17 pathway, thus, may support the chronic hepatitis B state.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Wang et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.