1. STAT3 regulation of Mtb-specific T cell function in active pulmonary tuberculosis patients.
- Author
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Chen, Ruiqi, LI, Meihui, Qin, Shuang, Lu, Hong, Shen, Mo, and Lin, Xiangyang
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TUBERCULOSIS , *LATENT tuberculosis , *CELL physiology , *TUBERCULOSIS patients , *T cells , *STAT proteins , *PROGRAMMED cell death 1 receptors , *T cell receptors - Abstract
• ·T cells in pleural effusion have higher levels of STAT3 phosphorylation. • ·Multifunctional T cells of APTB patients have higher pSTAT3 levels. • ·The STAT3+ pSTAT3- phenotype of Mtb-specific T cells tended to be more anti-apoptotic. Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the most serious infectious diseases in the world. Our aim was to investigate the regulatory role of STAT3 and pSTAT3 in the regulation of T cell immunophenotype and cell function. Twenty-five active pulmonary tuberculosis (APTB) patients, 18 latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) patients, and 20 healthy controls (HCs) enrolled in this study. T cell phenotype and expression of STAT3 and pSTAT3 were detected by flow cytometry. Compared with HCs, the expression of pSTAT3 in CD4+ T and CD8+ T cells in peripheral blood of APTB patients was increased, and the expression was higher in pleural effusion. Multifunctional T cells that simultaneously secrete IFN-γ, TNF-α and IL-17A have higher pSTAT3 expression levels. Mtb-specific T cells from APTB patients had a higher cell frequency of the STAT3+ pSTAT3+ phenotype and a reduced cell frequency of the STAT3+ pSTAT3- phenotype compared with LTBI patients. Mtb-specific T cells with STAT3+ pSTAT3+ phenotype had higher expression of PD-1 and PD-L1, while cells with STAT3+ pSTAT3- phenotype had higher expression of Bcl-2. STAT3 and pSTAT3 in T cells of APTB patients feature in the process of anti-apoptosis and cytokine secretion. At the same time, the higher pSTAT3 may be related to the degree of cell functional exhaustion. The pSTAT3 level of T cells is related to the infection status and may indicate the clinical activity of the disease, which provides a new idea for the clinical identification and treatment of active pulmonary tuberculosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
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