Identification of the antigen recognized by autoreactive Th17 helper cells inducing CIDP

我们使用基于荧光珠的免疫分析法分析了CIDP患者和健康对照者脑脊液（CSF）样本中多种炎症细胞因子和趋化因子的水平。我们发现IL-8、MCP-1和IL-17水平升高，表明在CIDP中IL-8/IL-17轴被激活。一些CIDP患者的脑脊液中IL-10水平明显降低，IL-10是抗炎T细胞受损的指标，也是它们对CIDP机制的潜在贡献。我们还对CIDP患者和健康对照者的外周血细胞进行了流式细胞术分析。我们在CIDP患者和健康对照的新鲜外周血样本中发现少量T细胞IL-17和CD4均呈阳性。细胞因子染色显示CIDP患者IL-17阳性T细胞数量无明显增加。然而，与健康对照组相比，PMA和离子霉素刺激外周血细胞导致CIDP患者IL-17阳性细胞数量增加。我们在CIDP患者的外周血中发现了Th17细胞，表明它们可能在CIDP复杂的免疫机制中发挥作用。

We analyzed multiplex inflammatory cytokine and chemokine levels in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) samples from the patients with CIDP and healthy controls using a fluorescent bead-based immunoassay. We found elevated levels of IL-8 and MCP-1 as well as IL-17, indicating activated IL-8/IL-17 axis in CIDP. Some patients with CIDP showed undetectably lower level of IL-10 in their CSF, which is an index of compromised anti-inflammatory T cells and their potential contribution to the mechanism of CIDP. We also performed flowcytometric analysis of peripheral blood cells in the CIDP patients and healthy controls. We found minimal T cells showing positivity for both IL-17 and CD4 in fresh peripheral blood samples from CIDP patients and healthy control. Intracellular cytokine-staining showed no significant increment of the number of IL-17 positive T cells in patients with CIDP. However, stimulating the peripheral blood cells by PMA and ionomycin resulted in the increased number of IL-17 positive cells in the patient with CIDP comparing to in healthy control. We identified Th17 cells in the peripheral blood cells from the patients with CIDP, indicating their potential contribution to the complex immunological mechanism in CIDP.