Relationship of regulatory T cells to Plasmodium falciparum malaria symptomatology in a hypoendemic region

Malaria Journal

Research

José Chauca¹  Jorge Bendezú²  Elizabeth Villasis²  Dionicia Gamboa²  Katherine J Torres²  Joseph M Vinetz³ 

[1] Instituto de Medicina Tropical “Alexander Von Humboldt”, Universidad Peruana, Cayetano Heredia, Lima 100, 4314, AP, Peru;Instituto de Medicina Tropical “Alexander Von Humboldt”, Universidad Peruana, Cayetano Heredia, Lima 100, 4314, AP, Peru;Departamento de Ciencias Celulares y Moleculares, Laboratorios de Investigación y Desarrollo,Facultad de Ciencias y Filosofía, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima 100, 4314, AP, Peru;Instituto de Medicina Tropical “Alexander Von Humboldt”, Universidad Peruana, Cayetano Heredia, Lima 100, 4314, AP, Peru;Departamento de Ciencias Celulares y Moleculares, Laboratorios de Investigación y Desarrollo,Facultad de Ciencias y Filosofía, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Lima 100, 4314, AP, Peru;Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA;

关键词: Regulatory T cells;    Asymptomatic;    Symptomatic;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1475-2875-13-108

 received in 2013-09-16, accepted in 2014-03-14,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPrevious data have suggested that regulatory T cells (Tregs) balance protective immune responses with immune mediated pathology in malaria. This study aimed to determine to test the hypothesis that Treg proportions or absolute levels are associated with parasitaemia and malaria symptoms.MethodsTreg cells were quantified by flow cytometry as CD4+ CD25+, Foxp3+, CD127low T cells. Three patient groups were assessed: patients with symptomatic Plasmodium falciparum malaria (S), subjects with asymptomatic P. falciparum parasitaemia (AS) and uninfected control individuals (C).ResultsS, AS and C groups had similar absolute numbers and percentage of Tregs (3.9%, 3.5% and 3.5% respectively). Levels of parasitaemia were not associated with Treg percentage (p = 0.47).ConclusionNeither relative nor absolute regulatory T cell numbers were found to be associated with malaria-related symptomatology in this study. Immune mechanisms other than Tregs are likely to be responsible for the state of asymptomatic P. falciparum parasitaemia in the Peruvian Amazon; but further study to explore these mechanisms is needed.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Torres et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. 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 credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.