Objective: To explore the characteristics of T cell immunity in peripheral blood of patients with carboxypeptidase-H antibody (CPH-Ab).
Methods: Forty-two latent autoimmune diabetes in adults (LADA) patients with CPH-Ab(+) alone, 20 Type 2 diabetes mellitus patients (T2DM), and 22 healthy controls were selected and their peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated. Human recombinant carboxypeptidase (CPH) protein was expressed and further used as a stimulant in Enzyme-linked immunospot (ELISPOT) assay to detect IFN-gamma-Th1 and IL-4-Th2 cells in the 3 groups. Th1/Th2 ratios were also calculated. CPH-Ab and glutamic acid decarboxylase antibody (GAD-Ab) were determined by radioligand assay.
Results: Compared with healthy controls and T2DM, IFN-gamma-Th1 and IL-4-Th2 numbers did not increase significantly in CPH-Ab(+) group, nor did the Th1/Th2 ratios (P>0.05). We further divided the CPH-Ab(+) patients into a short duration group (n=22) and a long duration subgroup (n=20) according to the duration of 3 years. CPH-IL-4-T in the short duration subgroup was significantly higher than that in T2DM and healthy controls (1.8 vs. 0.2 and 0.3, both P<0.05) and we did not find any factor that was significantly correlated with the IL-4 spots number. There were not any significant differences in T cell responses to phaseolus vulgaris agglutinin (PHA) among all groups (P>0.05).
Conclusion: CPH does not directly involve in the cellular pathological mechanism of LADA. Anti-CPH immunity may be associated with more slowly aggressive beta cell autoimmunity.