Brain Disorders & Therapy

Abstract

T-Cells Show Increased Production of Cytokines and Activation Markers in Alzheimer's Disease

Agnes Pirker-Kees, Christiane Schmied and Peter Dal-Bianco

In Alzheimer ́s disease (AD), there is growing evidence of the presence of both systemic and local inflammatory processes, which might be either causative or a reaction to pathology. To characterize the systemic inflammatory profile of AD, we investigated peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets of AD patients and age-matched Healthy Controls (HC), and their production of the pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-6, IL-17, TNFα, and IFNγ, together with surface expression of lymphocyte-activation-markers. Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells (PBMCs) were stained ex vivo for activation markers. Intracellular cytokine staining was done after activation in vitro with CD3/CD28 for four days. Cells were analyzed using flow cytometry.In AD patients we found significantly increased frequencies of both CD4+ and CD8+ cells producing IL-6 and IL-17, respectively. In addition we detected a significantly increased percentage of IFNγ producing CD4+ cells and CD4+ cells expressing the activation markers CCR5 and HLA-DR. Taken together, our data supports the existence of a systemic inflammatory process involving also Th17-cells in AD.