Natural Killer Cells and its Subsets in Pulmonary Tuberculosis Patients Under Treatment,ADEL HASSAN, AHMED FAISAL, SAID LABIB, MAHMOUD SHEDID and SOHA EZZ EL DEEN
Abstract
Tuberculosis remains a major health problem in different region of the world. Egypt is one of these areas. Although the great efforts to control this infection the cases detection rate and mutlti-drug resistant cases are still not controlled enough to the satisfactory limit for both WHO and the Egyptian national program. One of the important steps along the way to fight T.B. is to know more about how the immune system deals with this infection. Natural killer is a key player in the innate immunity response against the infection. Each of the NK subsets has a specific function and is identified by the expression both CD56 and or CD16. This study included 20 T.B. patients and their matching control group of healthy blood donors. NK and its subsets were assessed in peripheral blood by flowcytomtery. The resuly showed significant increase in T cells, NK cells CD56+/CD16- and CD56-/CD16+ while, there was decrease in the CD56+/CD16+ subset. Further studies regarding the effect of treatment on these changes are required to understand better the role Of the Natural killer in the immunity against T.B infection.