Selective Reduction and Recovery of Invariant Vα24JαQ TCR T Cells in Correlation with Disease Activity in Patients with Chronic Graft-versus-Diseases

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Natural Killer (NK) T cells regulate immune responses including autoimmunity and are selectively decreased in autoimmune disease. We investigated the regulatory role of CD4- CD8- double-negative (DN) invariant TCR Vα24JαQ T cells, a human counterpart of murine NK T cells, in the development of chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) that resemble to autoimmune disease in clinical features. For this purpose, we monitored frequencies of invariant Vα24JαQ DN T cells in PBL from 8 bone marrow transplantation (BMT) patients, 4 of whom developed chronic GVHD. Invariant Vα24+ DN T cells were recovered at 3 mo. after BMT as a dominated population of DN Vα24 T cells. However, the recovery of these cells was delayed compared with that of conventional T cells. Furthermore, we found that invariant Vα24JαQ DN T cells were not detected at the onset of chronic GVHD and that invariant Vα24JαQ DN T cells were again found after successful treatment for chronic GVHD with prednisolone. These results indicate that the selective reduction of invariant Vα24JαQ DN T cells is related to the disease progression of chronic GVHD, suggesting that the NK T cells may regulate the development of chronic GVHD.
2009-06-01