The study on the immune suppression with severity of HBV-related acute-on-chronic liver failure patients / 中华消化杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore the association of immune suppression with the severity of HBV-related acute-on-chronic liver failure(ACLF) patients.Methods From August 2009 to April 2010 in Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, the peripheral blood samples and clinical data of 27 HBV-related ACLF patients (ACLF group), 28 patients wit h chronic active hepatitis B (CHB group)and 8 healthy individuals (Control group) were collected.APACHE Ⅲ score and the grade of hepatic encephalopathy were as quantitative index to evaluate the severity degree of the disease.The absolute counts of the subsets of T lymphocytes and human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DR expression on the surface of monocyte in patients' peripheral blood were examined by flow cytometry, the proinflammatory cytokines and anti-inflammatory cytokines(IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-2, IL-4, IL-10) in patients' plasma were detected by cytometric bead array (CBA) kit.The data was analyzed with SPSS 16.0 software.Results Compared with CHB group and control group, the level of anti-inflammatory eytokire IL-10 markedly increased ir HBV-related ACLF patients (Z= -4.279 ,U= 124, P＜0.01;Z= - 3.871, U= 9.5, P= 0.0001 ), however the level of pro-inflammatory cytokines IFN-γ、 TFN-α、IL-2 、 IL-4 in plasma were at low limit of detectable value.Meanwhile the expression quantity of HLA-DR on the peripheral blood monocytes significantly down-regulated (Z= -4.714, U= 98, P＜0.01;7= - 4.086, U = 4, P＜ 0.01), and there was negative correlation between HLA-DR expression quantity and APACHE Ⅲ score (R2 =0.2667, P=0.0167).In addition, the absolute counts of CD4+T lymphocytes in adaptive immune cells significantly decreased (Z= -4.411, U= 116, P＜0.01; Z=-3.575, U= 17, P= 0.0004).Conclusions The immune system of HBV-related ACLF patients displays immune dysfunction like monocyte function inhibition; CD4+ T lymphocytes depletion and high level of anti-inflammatory eytokines, the persistent down-regulation of the HLA-DR expression on monocyte is an indicator for the severity of disease.