Increase of CD_4~+ CD_(25)~+ Regulatory T Cells in Peripheral Blood from Patients with Advanced Lung Cancer

In order to evaluate the clinical significance of the expression of CD+4 CD+25 regulatory T cells and T cell subsets in blood of patients,CD+4 CD+25 regulatory T cells and T cell subsets were measured by flow cytometry in 86 patients with advanced lung cancer and 64 normal controls.The results showed that the percentage of CD+4 CD+25 regulatory T cells in patients with advanced lung cancer increased significantly than that in the control group(18.4±6.2% vs 7.1±0.4%,P0.01).The percentage of CD+4 cells,CD+8 CD+28 cells and NK cells in patients with advanced lung cancer decreased significantly compared with those in the control group(32.4±8.7% vs 44.9±8.4%,P0.01;7.4±3.5% vs 16.5±2.7%,P0.01;10.2±4.1% vs 18.5±7.2%,P0.01).The percentage of CD+8 cells in patients with advanced lung cancer increased significantly compared with that in the control group(36.7±7.5% vs 31.8±5.1%,P0.01).The CD+4 CD+25 regulatory T cells had remarkable negative correlation with CD+8CD+28cells and NK cells.Those observations provide evidence for the contribution of CD+4 CD+25 regulatory T cells to immune dysfunction in patients with lung cancer.