Regulatory T cells and progenitor B cells are independent prognostic predictors in lower risk myelodysplastic syndromes

Is There a Role for Flow Cytometry in the Evaluation of Patients With Myelodysplastic Syndromes?

“…Within the T-cell compartment, FCM studies showed that regulatory T-cells (Treg, defined as CD4+CD25hiFoxP3+) were increased in high-risk MDS [60] while IL-17 producing CD4+ T-cells were increased in low-risk disease [61]. Recently, Kahn et al reported that both increased levels of Treg and decreased levels of Bcell progenitors are associated with poor prognosis in low-risk MDS [62]. In a more in-depth study of various Treg subsets, Mailloux et al determined that an increase in the absolute number of CD4+FOXP3+CD25+CD127 low CD45RA−CD27 − Tregs (effector memory Tregs) was significant for prognosis in MDS patients independent of IPSS prognostic factors [63].…”

Reduced regulatory T cells (Treg) in bone marrow preferentially associate with the expansion of cytotoxic T lymphocytes in low risk MDS patients

“…A long‐term follow‐up study (Sloand et al , ) reported that responders to immune‐suppression showed significantly longer survival with lower transformation to leukaemia. In addition, Tregs together with B cell progenitors were described as independent prognostic predictors in Low Risk patients, while overall survival and progression‐free survival was significantly associated with lower Treg levels (Kahn et al , ). Moreover, the co‐occurrence of MDS with autoimmune disorders was observed to predict longer survival and reduced leukaemia progression (Glenthøj et al , ; Komrokji et al , ).…”

Regulatory T Cells and Profile of FOXP3 Isoforms Expression in Peripheral Blood of Patients with Myelodysplastic Syndromes

“…It should be noted beforehand that all the results obtained for the E-MDS and L-MDS groups had no statistically significant differences, so in the text below the significance of the differences is mentioned only in the context of a comparison with the MDS-primary or age control groups. However, we did not join E-MDS and L-MDS groups to emphasize the absence of these differences in our study, despite previous findings linking a poor prognosis of the disease with increased Treg frequencies [ 4 – 7 ].…”

“…Most of the conducted studies link increased Treg frequencies with an unfavorable MDS prognosis [ 4 – 7 ]. Despite a similar conclusion in these studies, the data obtained on the number of Treg in MDS were rather contradictory, probably relating to different sample preparation protocols and gating strategies used in flow cytometry analysis [ 8 ].…”