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

Figure 4

Suppressive function of CD69⁺Treg lymphocytes in patients with SLE and healthy controls. Freshly isolated PBMC from 10 patients with SLE and 12 healthy individuals were depleted or not of CD69⁺ cells and then stimulated through CD3/CD28 for 7 hours. Finally, the expression of CD40L was assessed by flow cytometry. (a) Representative dot plots of CD40L expression in cell cultures of nondepleted (PBMC) or depleted (PBMC w/o CD69⁺ cells) from CD69⁺ cells in samples from a healthy control (left) and a SLE patient (right). (b) Levels of CD40L⁺ cells in samples from healthy controls and SLE patients. (c) Percent of suppression of cell activation in samples from healthy controls and SLE patients. Data correspond to the arithmetic mean and SD. , , .

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