role of nkt cells in the pathogenesis of nafldnkt细胞在非酒精性脂肪肝的发病机制中的作用.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Hepatology Volume 2012, Article ID 850836, 6 pages doi:10.1155/2012/850836 Review Article Role of NKT Cells in the Pathogenesis of NAFLD Kazuto Tajiri1 and Yukihiro Shimizu2 1 The Third Department of Internal Medicine, Toyama University Hospital, Toyama, Toyama 930-0194, Japan 2 Gastroenterology Unit, Takaoka City Hospital, Takaoka, Toyama 933-8550, Japan Correspondence should be addressed to Yukihiro Shimizu, rsf14240@ Received 9 November 2011; Revised 12 January 2012; Accepted 23 January 2012 Academic Editor: Manuela Neuman Copyright © 2012 K. Tajiri and Y. Shimizu. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most frequent chronic liver disease and shows various inflammatory changes in the liver. Among those inflammatory cells, natural killer T (NKT) cells are found to have a critical role during the disease progression. NKT cells may have a protective role at the early stage with simple steatosis through modification of insulin resistance, whereas they act as a progression factor at the advanced stage with fibrosis. Those processes are thought to depend on interaction between NKT cells and CD1d molecule in the liver. 1. Introduction 2. Hepatic NKT Cells and Their Role in the Pathogenesis of Liver Diseases Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most fre- quent chronic liver disease in the world [1]. NAFLD shows 2.1. NKT Cells in the Liver.