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Updated: Jul 16, 2026
Flow Cytometry Analysis of Immune Cells Within Murine Aortas
Published on: July 1, 2011
The soluble forms of CD28, CD86 and CTLA-4 constitute possible immunological markers in patients with abdominal
P Sakthivel1, V Shively, M Kakoulidou
1Immunological Research Laboratory, Center for Molecular Medicine (L8:00), Karolinska Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.
Objective:
The T cell co-stimulatory factors CD28 and CTLA-4 and their ligands CD80 and CD86 occur as receptors on T cells and antigen-presenting cells and also in soluble forms in the circulation. We determined the levels of soluble co-stimulatory molecules in patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and normal individuals. We further correlated these soluble co-stimulatory molecules to other clinical parameters of importance such as age of the patient, presence of hypertension, size of the aneurysm and levels of matrix metalloproteinases-9 and C-reactive protein.
Design, Setting, Subjects:
This case-control study was designed to quantify the circulating levels of soluble co-stimulatory molecules by an in-house enzyme linked immunosorbent assay. A total of 314 subjects participated in the study including 100 patients and 214 normal controls. The statistical analysis was performed by Mann-Whitney test and Spearman's correlation rank test.
Results:
Our results show increased plasma levels of sCD28, sCD86 (P = 0.0001) and decreased plasma levels of sCTLA-4 (P = 0.0018) in the patients compared with normal individuals. The levels of these factors were not related to the age of the patient, size of aneurysm or levels of C-reactive protein in plasma. There was, however, a significant inverse relationship between the concentrations of sCTLA-4 and sCD80 with matrix metalloproteinase-9.
Conclusions:
We suggest that soluble co-stimulatory molecules serve as biomarkers for the estimation of immune activation in AAA patients.
