title: Low and high CD8 positive T cells in multiple sclerosis patients.
abstract: Cumulating evidence points to a key role for CD8+ T cells in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.CD8 expression level was believed to be present constantly on the surface of human peripheral blood T cells. However, it was shown that peripheral blood lymphocytes may be divided by the level of CD8 expression, into CD8+high and CD8+low T cells. Now it is well established that the CD8low population of CD8+ T cells demonstrates an activated effector phenotype while the CD8+high T cells have been reported to have regulatory function. In this report we used a flow cytometric assay to compare the frequency of these two subsets in multiple sclerosis patients (n=31) with healthy age- and gender-matched controls (n=18). We found that CD8+ T cells and CD8+low T cells significantly increased in secondary progressive (SP) and primary progressive multiple sclerosis (PPMS) patients in comparison to controls (p&lt;0.0002 and p&lt;0.004 respectively) and also RRMS (p&lt;0.005 and p&lt;0.017 respectively). These results demonstrated the role of CD8low T cells in progressive form of multiple sclerosis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. izadm@sina.tums.ac.ir.
authors.forename: Maryam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Izad
authors.forename: Mohammad Hossein
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Harirchian
authors.forename: Hamed
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Amiri
authors.forename: Farangis
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Najafi
authors.forename: Zahra
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Ghaflati
authors.forename: Zahra
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Salehi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D018414:CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes / Q000276:immunology*; D005260:Female; D005434:Flow Cytometry; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009103:Multiple Sclerosis / Q000276:immunology*; D012008:Recurrence