T cell proliferation induced by Borrelia burgdorferi in patients with lyme borreliosis. Autologous serum required for optimum stimulation
✍ Scribed by Andreas Krause; Joachim R. Kalden; Gerd R. Burmester; Volker Brade; Christoph Schoerner; Werner Solbach
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1991
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 967 KB
- Volume
- 34
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0004-3591
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✦ Synopsis
The cellular immune response to Borrelia burgdorferi was studied in 24 patients with seropositive and seronegative Lyme borreliosis, 30 patients with arthritides of different origin (non-Lyme arthritides), and 20 normal blood donors. By far, the strongest T cell stimulation was induced by incubation with autologous serum; there was a significantly lower response or no response after incubation with allogeneic or heterologous sera. In patients with Lyme borreliosis, including seronegative patients, there was a strikingly elevated proliferation in response to whole B burgdorferi bacteria (mean 64,750 dpm) compared with that of normal donors (mean 19,700 dpm; P < 0.0001) and especially that of non-Lyme arthritis patients (mean 11,600 dpm; P < 0.0001). Levels of proliferation declined significantly in patients with Lyme borreliosis after successful antibiotic treatment. Parallel cultures using B burgdor- f e n and Treponema phagedenis as antigens showed that cells from patients with Lyme borreliosis responded significantly more to B burgdorferi than to Tphagedenis,