ABSTRACT
<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To explore the role of treg cells and its functional markers in pathogenesis of chronic hepatitis B, and the correlation with disease progression.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>20 cases of healthy control people,53 cases of chronic hepatitis B patients and 24 cases of liver cirrhosis patients were enrolled into the groups. Detecting the frequencies of CD4+ CD25+ Fox3+ cells, CD4+ CD25+ CD127(low) cells, CD39+ treg cells and CTLA-4+ treg cells in treg cells by flow cytometry. Clinical parameters were investigated in the same time.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The frequencies of treg cells, CD4+ CD25+ CD127(low) cells and CD39+ treg cells were significant different among healthy control group, CHB group and LC group (P < 0.01). The frequencies of treg cells, CD4+ CD25+ CD127(low) cells and CD39+ treg cells were significantly different in moderate-severe CHB group compared with mild CHB group (P < 0.05, P < 0.05, P < 0.01). In CHB group the frequencies of CD4+ CD25+ Foxp3+ cells were positively correlated with ALT (r = 0. 289, P < 0.05) and AST (r = 0.302, P < 0.05), the frequencies of CD4+ CD25+ Foxp3+ cells had a significant positive correlation with the frequencies of CD4+ CD25+ CD127(low) cells (r = 0.478, P < 0.01).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>The frequencies of treg cells and its functional markers probably had a dynamic tendency in the process of chronic hepatitis B and were closely related with the change of liver function parameters. CD39+ treg cells may be a group of functional treg cells, which indicated that CD39 be a sensitive marker to react treg cells function. In some sense, CD4+ CD25+ CD127(low) cells frequency could represent treg cell frequency.</p>