Disproportion of Helper T Cell Subsets in Peripheral Blood of Patients with Primary Sjogren's Syndrome

Abstract

We studied the proportions of Thl and Th2 cells in peripheral blood of 15 patients with primary Sjögren's syndrome (p-SS), by using a procedure to enumerate the cells synthesizing cytokines such as INF-γ or 1L-4 in cytoplasm of CD4+ lymphocytes. The frequency of Thl (INF-y containing) cells in p-SS patients was significantly reduced as compared to normal control (20.57±7.48% vs 28.78 ± 11.56%, p<0.05), while that of Th2 (IL-4 containing) cells was not different from normal control (3.33 ±0.98% vs 2.85 ± 1.88%). The ratio of Thl to Th2 cells in p-SS patients was significantly decreased as compared to normal control (6.60 ± 3.15 vs 11.55 ft 6.72,p< 0.05). There was no difference in frequency of Thl or of Th2 cells between 8 patients given small amounts of prednisolone (PSL) and 7 patients not given PSL (21.44 ±9.39% vs 19.57 ±5.05%, 3.12 ±0.80% vs 3.56 ± 1.17%). The percentage of Thl cells was not different between 7 patients with glandular symptoms (G) and 8 patients with extraglandular symptoms (EG) (18.61 ±9.63% vs 22.27 ± 5.02%). Although the frequency of Th2 cells was higher in EG-patients than that in G-patients (3.84 ± 0.78% vs 2.74 ± 0.86%) with tendency of elevated IgG level in sera, the ratio of Thl to Th2 cells was not different among them (6.26 ± 2.84 vs 6.99 ± 3.64). These results suggest that the reduced ratio of Thl to Th2 cells is essential and is related to the dysfunction of cellular immunity in p-SS.

Key Words:

• Thl and Th2 cells
• Cd4+ colls
• Cytoplasmic INF-γ
• Cytoplasmic IL-4
• Primary Sjögren's syndrome