The profiles of T lymphocytes and subsets in peripheral blood of patients with chronic idiopathic urticaria

Chronic idiopathic urticaria (CIU) is defined as persistent symptoms of urticaria for 6 weeks or more. It is associated with autoimmunity in approximately 35-40% of the patients. Immunological dysfunction has been described to occur in the patients with CIU, most notably in association with an inflammatory process. Apart from the factors of humoral immunity such as autoantibody, there may be some cellular immunity factors usually mediated by T lymphocytes involved in the pathogenesis of CIU. However, the actions of T lymphocytes and lymphocyte subsets in the pathogenesis of CIU are not fully delineated so far. This present study was aimed to investigate the roles of T lymphocytes and lymphocyte subsets in the pathogenesis of CIU. Thirty patients with CIU and 30 healthy controls were randomly enrolled. Flow cytometry was used to analyze the constituent ratios of CD3+, CD4+, CD8+, Th1, Th2, Th17 and Treg lymphocyte subsets in peripheral blood. The results showed that, as compared with the control group, the ratios of CD8+ and Th2 lymphocyte subsets in patients with CIU significantly increased (P<0.05), while the ratio of Th17 cells decreased significantly (P<0.05). No obvious changes were observed in the constituent ratios of CD3+, CD4+, Th1 and Treg lymphocyte subsets (P>O.O5). There were imbalance of CD4+/CD8+, Th1/Th2 and Th17/Treg cell populations in patients with CIU (P<0.05). The results suggest that the imbalance of lymphocyte subset plays a role in the pathogenesis of CIU.