phenotypical characterization of the peripheral blood t cells in the patients with celiac disease: does it differentiate suspicious celiac disease cases?

background: celiac disease (cd) is a small bowel enteropathy caused by permanent wheat gluten intolerance. one of the earliest signs of the mucosal immune activation in cd is an increase in the intestinal intraepithelial lymphocytes (iiels) count in the small intestinal epithelium. although most of those iiels express ??tcr, cd is characterized by an increase in the gdtcr + iiels. objective: the present study aimed to establish whether these immunological changes seen in the intestinal epithelium of cd patients could also be detected in the peripheral blood lymphocytes with special emphasis on the gdtcr + t cells. patients and method: in this case-control study, totally 29 subjects with acceptable criteria and without any complication who referred to the al-zahra hospital, isfahan, iran, were selected. peripheral blood t cells were analyzed by two color flow cytometry in 13 untreated patients with cd and 16 healthy control subjects. results: the mean age of patients was 33.6±3.4 years old and two patients had marsh iiib, five patients had marsh iiia and six patients had marsh ii histology class. the mean percentages of the gdtcr + t cells in the patients were significantly higher than the controls ( p = 0.015). however, the mean percentages of the ??tcr + t cells were significantly lower in the untreated patients than the controls ( p = 0.025). there were no significant difference between the mean percentages of lymphocytes expressing the cd3, cd4 and cd8 molecules in the patients and the controls. conclusion: the change in the percentages of the peripheral blood t cells expressing the ??tcr and ??tcr in the celiac patients could be used in conjunction with the other serological markers to confirm the cd cases and these findings may lead to better understanding of the cd immunpathogenesis.