Study On The Expression Of TLR2 And TLR4 In The Peripheral Blood Monocytes Of The Patients With Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Objective: Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease whichetiology is unclear. It can involve many organs and be prone to have the complicationof infection. The Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are pattern recognition receptors (PRRs),which can recognize many pathogen-associated molecule patterns (PAMPs). TLRsplay an important role between innate immune system and adaptive immune system.Now 13 kinds of TLRs are recognized. It has been demonstrated that Toll-likereceptor2 (TLR2) and Toll-like receptor4 (TLR4) have relationship with infectivediseases, vascular diseases and autoimmune diseases. The aim of this study is toexamine the expression of TLR2 and TLR4 in the peripheral blood monouclear cellsof SLE patients and explore their association with disease stage and clinicalmanifestations and to explore the pathogensis of SLE.Methods: we examined the expression of TLR2 and TLR4 in the peripheral bloodmonocytes by flow cytometry. We compared the expression of TLR2 and TLR4between SLE group(30 individuals) and hleathy control group(12 individuals). Weanalyzed the correlation between TLR2/TLR4 and ESR, CRP, C3, C4, the amount ofanti-double strands DNA, SLEDAI score and urine protein excretion. Then accordingto SLEDAI score and infction, we divided 30 SLE patients into 4 groups: activegroup without infect-ion(5 individuals), active group with infection(9 individuals),non-active group without infection(7 individuals), and non-active group withinfection(9 individuals), and compared the expression of TLR2 and TLR4 among thefour groups. Furthermore, we divided SLE patients into albuminuria negativegroup(18 individuals) and albuminuria positive group(12 individuals) according tothe urine protein, then compared the expression.Results: The expression of TLR2 and TLR4 of SLE patients were significantly higher than the nonnal group(P＜0.005), no difference among the four groups ofSLE(P＞0.05). The expression of TLR4 of albuminuria negative group is higher thanalbuminuria positive group(P＜0.05).The expression of TLR2 and TLR4 have nocorrelation with ESR, CRP, C3, C4, the amount of anti-double strands DNA andSLEDAI score. But the TLR2 have correlation with urine protein excretion(r=0.659,P＜0.05).Conclusion: This study investigated the expression of TLR2 and TLR4 from thelevel of protein. The expression of TLR2 and TLR4 were higher in SLE than inhealthy individual, but no correlation with SLEDAI score. The relationship betweenTLR2/TLR4 and urine protein excretion need to be studied further more.