Changes Of The Peripheral Blood NKT Cells In Nonaleoholic Fatty Liver Disease Patients

Objective Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease(NAFLD) is a clinicopathologic syndrome and a common clinical chronic liver disease, without history of excessive alcohol consumption, with characteristic of liver parenchymal cell denaturation and fat accumulate. Its disease spectrum varied with the progress of disease, including simple fatty liver, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), cirrhosis and liver cancer. Based on different cytokines secreted by NKT cells and the amount of NKT cells, and their changes in the progression of NAFLD, this study is to investigate immunomodulatory effect of NKT cells in NAFLD pathogenesis.Methods All patients were diagnosed in the experimental group were from the Nanjing Military Region, Fuzhou General Hospital outpatients and hospitalized patients, started from April2011to September2011. Collect NAFLD patients by following "nonalcoholic fatty liver disease diagnosis and treatment guidelines" revised by Chinese Medical Institute of Liver Diseases Fatty Liver and Alcoholic Liver Disease in2006. Collect46NAFLD patients, including25male and21female, medium age49years, age range from30years to71years. From April2011,30heathy people were collected in the control group,15cases were male and15female, medium age47years, age range from31years to69years. After inquiring disease history, recording age and gender, measuring height weight and blood pressure, we calculated body mass index (BMI). Extracted10ml fasting venous blood for AST, ALT, GGT and HDL-C, LDL-C, TG, TC, fasting glucose, hepatitis markers, NKT cells, cytokines (IL-4and IFN-y) and so on. Indicators of the relationship between the experimental group and control group, following statistical methods, indexes of the experimental group were compared with those of control group and indexes were compared among the three experimental groups.Results1.In NAFLD patients, the proportion of peripheral blood NKT cells in the lymphocytes in group A was (3.13±3.33)%,(2.64±1.44)%in group B and(1.52±0.61)%in group C, in control group the proportion of peripheral blood NKT cells was (5.08±2.53)%. In NAFLD patients, the proportion of peripheral blood NKT cells was significantly lower than that of the control group (P<0.05).2.In NAFLD patients, the proportion of peripheral blood NKT cells in group A.B.C were all lower than that of the control group (P<0.01).But the differences of the proportion of peripheral blood NKT cells that were compared among the three experiment groups do not have statistical significance (P>0.05).3. In NAFLD patients, the content of IL-4in serum in group A was (26.70±18.78)ng/ml,(21.81±15.37)ng/ml in group B,(37.56±22.23)ng/ml in group C and (33.78±22.62)ng/ml in control group, and there was no significantly difference between the three group of NAFLD and the control group.4. In NAFLD patients, the content of IFN-γ in serum in group A was (56.17±28.32) ng/ml,(65.88±45.12)ng/ml in group B,(88.48±66.19)ng/ml in group C and (56.18+27.78)ng/ml in control group. There was no significantly different between the group A.B of NAFLD and the control group (P>0.05), and the content of IFN-y in control group was significantly lower than that of the group C (P<0.05).Conclusion According to the results of this study, the proportion of NKT cells in the lymphocytes in peripheral blood will reduce in NAFLD patients. The downward trend of the proportion of NKT cells in peripheral blood in the progression of NAFLD still needed further demonstrate. The content of Cytokines (IL-4and IFN-y) in the progression of NAFLD was how to change still not sure. And correlation between the proportion of NKT cells and the content of Cytokines needed further demonstrate.