No abstract

BackgroundPatients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) exhibit a premature aging phenotype of the immune system. Nevertheless, the etiology and impact of these changes in ESRD patients remain unknown.ResultsCompared to healthy individuals, ESRD patients exhibit accelerated immunosenescence in both T cell and monocyte compartments, characterized by a dramatic reduction in naïve CD4+ and CD8+ T cell numbers but increase in CD8+ TEMRA cell and proinflammatory monocyte numbers. Notably, within ESRD patients, aging-related immune changes positively correlated not only with increasing age but also with longer dialysis vintage. In multivariable-adjusted logistic regression models, the combination of high terminally differentiated CD8+ T cell level and high intermediate monocyte level, as a composite predictive immunophenotype, was independently associated with prevalent coronary artery disease as well as cardiovascular disease, after adjustment for age, sex, systemic inflammation and presence of diabetes. Levels of terminally differentiated CD8+ T cells also positively correlated with the level of uremic toxin p-cresyl sulfate.ConclusionsAging-associated adaptive and innate immune changes are aggravated in ESRD and are associated with cardiovascular diseases. For the first time, our study demonstrates the potential link between immunosenescence in ESRD and duration of exposure to the uremic milieu.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12979-018-0131-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Human oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) constitutes an inflammatory microenvironment enriched with chemokines such as CCL20, which promote cancer cell invasion and tumor progression. We found that in OSCC there is a correlation between the expression of and mRNA. Therefore, we hypothesized that OSCC may favor the recruitment and retention of regulatory T (Treg) cells that express the CCL20 receptor, CCR6. Interestingly, most (∼60%) peripheral blood Treg cells express CCR6, and CCR6 Treg cells exhibit an activated effector/memory phenotype. In contrast, a significant portion (>30%) of CCR6 Treg cells were found to be CD45RA naive Treg cells. Compared to CCR6 naive or memory Treg cells, CCR6 Treg cells exhibit stronger suppressive activity and display higher FOXP3 expression along with lower methylation at the Treg-specific demethylated region of the gene. This predominance of CCR6 Treg cells was also found in the draining lymph nodes and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes of OSCC patients with early or late clinical staging. Moreover, CCR6 Treg cells isolated from tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes or draining lymph nodes maintained similar phenotypic and suppressive characteristics ex vivo as did their counterparts isolated from peripheral blood. These results suggest that CCR6 marks activated effector or memory Treg phenotypes with superior suppressive activity in humans.

No abstract