Imbalance of Peripheral CD4+T Cell Subsets in Active Vitiligo

Abstract

Abstract Accumulating studies have indicated that vitiligo is one kind of autoimmune diseases and CD4+T cells play important roles in the pathogenesis of vitiligo. However, there have been very limited papers concerning the profile of circulating CD4+T cell subsets in active vitiligo. To clarify this issue, we investigated the changes of peripheral Th1, Th2, Th17, Tfh and Tregs from 30 patients with active vitiligo. We found that compared with healthy controls, the percentages of circulating Th1 and Th17 were significantly increased, while the proportions of Th2 and Tregs showed no significant difference to healthy controls. Similar results were got in qualification of their corresponding transcription factors at mRNA level. In addition, the percentage of CD4+CXCR5+Tfh was significantly elevated in vitiligo patients. Compared with healthy controls, the expression level of IL-17A was significantly increased in sera of patients with active vitiligo, while the productions of IFN-γ, IL-4, TGF-β had no significant change. The imbalance observed between the effector and suppressor CD4+T cells in the current study suggests their involvement in the pathogenesis of vitiligo. Besides these changes of cellular immunity, increased Tfh indicates humoral immunity may also be responsible for development of vitiligo.