Search

Highlights • Few paper investigates the role of CD8+CD28+ T cells in patients with AMI. • The frequency of CD8+CD28+ T cells in patients with AMI were significant increased. • In patients with AMI, frequency of CD8+CD28+ T cells was positively correlated with TNI and negatively associated with LVEF. • The CD8+ CD28+ T cell might participate in the process of myocardial damage. Abstract CD8+ T cells accumulate in the necrotic myocardium of acute myocardial infarction (AMI). It is unclear whether CD8+CD28+ T cells, a specific subset of CD8+ T cells, contribute to myocardial injury. In this study, 92 consecutive patients with AMI and 28 healthy control subjects were enrolled. The frequency of CD8+CD28+ T cells in peripheral blood samples was assayed by flow cytometry. Plasma cardiac troponin I (TNI) and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) were determined. Long-term prognosis of the patients was evaluated by major adverse cardiac and cerebrovascular events (MACCE) over a 12-month follow-up period. Our findings indicated that patients with AMI who presented with high numbers of CD8+CD28+ T cells had an increased infarction size and aggravated ventricular function. We proposed that cytotoxic CD8+CD28+ T cell-mediated myocardial necrosis may act as a novel and alternative pathway of AMI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper reports the cloning and sequencing of interleukin (IL)-23 p19 subunit for the first time within a non-mammalian species, the zebrafish (Danio rerio), which was discovered using a synteny approach. In addition, amino acid sequences were for IL-23 p19 subunits were also predicted from the stickleback, Fugu and Tetraodon genomes and included in this investigation. The zebrafish IL-23 p19 cDNA consisted of a 66bp 5′ UTR, a 249bp 3′ UTR and a single open reading frame of 567bp giving a predicted 188 aa IL-23 p19 molecule. Multiple alignment of zebrafish IL-23 p19, with other known IL-23 p19 and IL-12 p35 amino acid sequences revealed areas of amino acid conservation, such as the presence of four predicted α-helixes, cysteines important for disulphide bond formation and the conservation of a tryptophan known to interact with the receptor. Amino acid homologies and phylogenetic analysis confirmed the relationship of the fish IL-23 p19 subunits with their mammalian homologues. All the teleost fish IL-23 p19 subunits were found to have 4 exons and 3 introns similar to that of human and mouse IL-23 p19 and a limited degree of synteny was found between the organisms for the regions containing the IL-23 p19 genes with only PAB-dependent poly(A)-specific ribonuclease subunit 2 (PAN2) and IL-23 p19 found in the same order on human chromosome 12 and all the fish genomes looked at. Lastly using real-time PCR, constitutive expression of IL-12 p40 and IL-23 p19 was observed in the kidney, liver, gut and muscle with IL-12 p40 expression higher than IL-23 p19. As soon as an hour after stimulation with LPS, there was an increase of IL-23 p19 in zebrafish leukocytes and an increase of IL-1β, IL-12 p40 and IL-23 p19 expression was found after infection of zebrafish for 1 or 6 days with Mycobaterium marinum strain E11. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper discusses some consequences of the discovery that antigen receptors are degenerate: Immune specificity, in contrast to the tenets of the clonal selection paradigm, must be generated by the immune response down-stream of initial antigen recognition; and specificity is a property of a collective of cells and not of single clones. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]