peripheral blood but not synovial fluid natural killer t cells are biased towards a th1-like phenotype in rheumatoid arthritis外周血但不滑液自然杀伤t细胞是偏向th1-like表型在类风湿性关节炎.pdf

Available online /content/7/3/R493 Vol 7 No 3 Open Access Research article Peripheral blood but not synovial fluid natural killer T cells are biased towards a Th1-like phenotype in rheumatoid arthritis Loes Linsen, Marielle Thewissen, Kurt Baeten, Veerle Somers, Piet Geusens, Jef Raus and Piet Stinissen Biomedisch Onderzoeksinstituut, Limburgs Universitair Centrum and School of Life Sciences, Transnationale Universiteit Limburg, Universitaire Campus, Diepenbeek, Belgium Corresponding author: Piet Stinissen, piet.stinissen@luc.ac.be Received: 13 Oct 2004 Revisions requested: 17 Nov 2004 Revisions received: 14 Jan 2005 Accepted: 19 Jan 2005 Published: 18 Feb 2005 Arthritis Research Therapy 2005, 7:R493-R502 (DOI 10.1186/ar1695) This article is online at: /content/7/3/R493 © 2005 Linsen et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/ 2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Natural killer T (NKT) cells have been implicated in the regulatory nonresponders expanded upon stimulation with α- immune mechanisms that control autoimmunity. However, their galactosylceramide. Analysis of the cytokine profile of CD4+ and precise role in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) CD4- PBMC derived NKT cell lines from RA patients revealed a remains unclear. The frequency, cytokine profile and significantly reduced number of IL-4 producing cells. In contrast, heterogeneity of NKT cells were studied in peripheral blood