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Updated: Oct 1, 2026
Analysis of HBV-Specific CD4 T-cell Responses and Identification of HLA-DR-Restricted CD4 T-Cell Epitopes Based on a Peptide Matrix
Published on: October 20, 2021
Discrimination of two different clinical entities, acute-type and subacute-type, human fulminant hepatitis by
T Shimizu1, K Tokushige, N Yamaguchi
1Division of Medicine, Institute of Gastroenterology, Tokyo Women's Medical University, Japan.
Abstract:
Human fulminant hepatitis tends to be classified into two groups: acute type (A-FH) and subacute type (S-FH). In order to define these two clinical entities more precisely, we examined and compared peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets in A-FH and S-FH patients. We found that S-FH patients had a higher prevalence of CD19+ B cells (31.1 +/- 7.6% in S-FH vs 12.7 +/- 3.7% in A-FH) and also a lower prevalence of CD3+T cells (50.2 +/- 8.7% in S-FH vs 65.6 +/- 10.5% in A-FH). Furthermore, by examining the absolute cell numbers of these subsets, we determined that their imbalance in S-FH was mainly due to a decrease in CD3+ T cells. Among several T cell subsets, the CD8+CD11b-T cell subset was elevated in A-FH and decreased in S-FH (6.1 +/- 2.1% in S-FH, 24.4 +/- 5.8% in A-FH, and 14.8 +/- 7.8% in control). Serial studies of two S-FH patients revealed that the imbalance of these lymphocyte subsets returned to their proper ratio together with the improvement of their liver injury. These results indicate that there might be a different immunological background between A-FH and S-FH.
