Correlation between radiculalgia and counts of T lymphocyte subsets in the peripheral blood of patients with lumbar disc herniation

作者：Peng Tian, Xinlong Ma, Tao Wang, Jianxiong Ma, Xue Yang · 发表于：Orthopaedic Surgery · 年份：2009 · DOI：10.1111/j.1757-7861.2009.00052.x · 被引用次数：23 · 研究领域：Spine and Intervertebral Disc Pathology、Immune cells in cancer、Inflammatory Biomarkers in Disease Prognosis

OBJECTIVE: To determine the correlation between the degree of radiculalgia and counts of T lymphocyte subsets in the peripheral blood of patients with lumbar disc herniation. METHODS: Forty-nine patients with lumbar disc herniation (group A) were divided into three subgroups according to Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) pain scores (group A(1): n= 12, VAS 0-4.0; A(2): n= 24, VAS 4.1-7.0; A(3): n= 13, VAS 7.1-10.0. Twenty health blood donors who volunteered to be involved in the study comprised the control group (group B). Peripheral blood counts of various T lymphocyte subsets were measured in each group. RESULTS: (i) The counts of CD4+ T and CD4+/CD8+ lymphocytes were higher in group A than in group B, and the difference between the two groups was statistically significant (P < 0.05). There were also statistically significant differences between group A and group B in the counts of CD3+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes (P < 0.05); (ii) There was no correlation between the VAS scores and the counts of CD3+ T lymphocytes (r= 0.194, P > 0.05). A strong significant correlation was observed between the VAS scores and counts of CD4+ T lymphocytes (r= 0.542, P < 0.05), CD4+/CD8+ (r= 0.468, P < 0.05), which increased with increasing VAS scores in the three subgroups of group A (P < 0.05). However there was a significant negative linear correlation between CD8+ T lymphocyte counts and pain scores (r=-0.462, P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that changes in T lymphocyte subsets in periphera...