Chung-Yeul-Gue-Soup-Sa-Gan-Tang, traditional Korean medicine, enhances CD4(+) T cell activities and modulates Th1/Th2 lineage development.

Chung-Yeul-Gue-Soup-Sa-Gan-Tang (CYT), a traditional Korea herbal medicine, has been widely used in Korea for the treatment of various immunological disorders, including allergic asthma. In this study, CYT was examined in vitro and tested for possible immunological effects. The results demonstrated that CYT had no mitogenic effects on unstimulated CD4(+) T cells, but rather increased CD4(+) T cell proliferation upon activation with anti-CD3/CD28 antibody. Under the Th0 condition, CYT also enhanced expression of interleukin (IL)-2 in purified murine CD4(+) T cells assayed by real-time PCR, suggesting that CYT moderately increases the activity of helper T cells upon T cell receptor ligation under the neutral condition. However, the Th1 cells were overpopulated following CYT treatment under the Th1 condition, while Th2 cells were under-populated in the Th2 driven condition. In addition, under Th1/Th2-skewed conditions, the levels of IL-4 were considerably decreased, while the expression of T-bet and interferon-gamma were increased with CYT treatment. Thus, CYT enhances Th1 lineage development from naive CD4(+) T cells both by increasing Th1 specific cytokine secretion and repressing Th2 specific cytokine production. These results suggest that CYT is a desirable agent for the correction of Th2 dominant pathological disorders.