Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Show Increased Levels and Defective Function of CD69⁺ T Regulatory Cells

Figure 2

Levels of CD69⁺ Treg cells in peripheral blood from patients with SLE and healthy controls. The frequency of CD69⁺ Treg cells was determined in freshly isolated PBMC from patients with SLE and healthy controls by multiparametric flow cytometry, as indicated in Materials and Methods. (a) Representative dot plots of a CD4⁺CD69⁺ cells from a healthy control and a patient with SLE. (b) Percent of CD4⁺CD69⁺ cells. (c) Percent of CD4⁺CD25^varCD69⁺LAP⁺IL-10⁺Foxp3⁻ cells. (d) Representative dot plots of CD4⁺NKG2D⁺ cells from a control and patient with SLE. (e) Levels of CD4⁺NKG2D⁺ cells. (f) Frequency of CD4⁺CD69⁺NKG2D⁺LAP⁺IL-10⁺Foxp3⁻ Treg cells. In all cases, the percentages of positive cells are referred to total lymphocytes. Horizontal lines correspond to the median and interquartile range. .

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