A programme of moderate physical exercise together with leucine supplements in patients with cirrhosis is safe and improves exercise capacity, leg muscle mass and HRQoL.

Expression of the scavenger receptor CD36 on lymphocytes is intriguing. We observed that a minor subpopulation of lymphocytes expressed CD36 on the cell surface. We investigated the source of CD36 and also the proliferation and cytokine production of these CD36(+) CD4(+) lymphocytes. Flow cytometry analysis and immunofluorescence microscopy showed that CD36(+) platelets were responsible for CD36 detection on lymphocytes. CD36 was then used as a tool to characterize lymphocytes with bound platelets. Activation-induced proliferation was lower in CD4(+) lymphocytes with bound platelets than lymphocytes without bound platelets. IL-17 and IFN-γ production was also reduced in lymphocytes with bound platelets. We then studied the presence of CD36(+) CD4(+) lymphocytes in RA patients. We observed that the percentage of CD4(+) lymphocytes with bound platelets was higher on RA patients than in healthy donors. RA patients with higher titers of anti-CCP, RF levels, and cardiovascular risk index presented a lower percentage of CD4(+) lymphocytes with bound platelets. These patients also had higher IL-17 and IFN-γ production. These results suggest that platelet-binding modifies lymphocyte function. This binding could be a regulatory mechanism in RA that confers a less severe phenotype.

No abstract

The tumor immune microenvironment is a main contributor to cancer progression and a promising therapeutic target for oncology. However, immune microenvironments vary profoundly between patients, and biomarkers for prognosis and treatment response lack precision. A comprehensive compendium of tumor immune cells is required to pinpoint predictive cellular states and their spatial localization. We generated a single-cell tumor immune atlas, jointly analyzing published data sets of >500,000 cells from 217 patients and 13 cancer types, providing the basis for a patient stratification based on immune cell compositions. Projecting immune cells from external tumors onto the atlas facilitated an automated cell annotation system. To enable in situ mapping of immune populations for digital pathology, we applied SPOTlight, combining single-cell and spatial transcriptomics data and identifying colocalization patterns of immune, stromal, and cancer cells in tumor sections. We expect the tumor immune cell atlas, together with our versatile toolbox for precision oncology, to advance currently applied stratification approaches for prognosis and immunotherapy.