Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Jun 7, 2017; 23(21): 3832-3838
Published online Jun 7, 2017. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v23.i21.3832
Clinical significance of changes in the Th17/Treg ratio in autoimmune liver disease
Ting-Ting Feng, Ting Zou, Xin Wang, Wei-Feng Zhao, Ai-Lan Qin
Ting-Ting Feng, Ting Zou, Xin Wang, Wei-Feng Zhao, Ai-Lan Qin, Department of Infectious Diseases, the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou 215000, Jiangsu Province, China
Author contributions: All authors contributed to this manuscript.
Supported by the Tianqing Liver Disease Research Foundation, China Foundation for Hepatitis Prevention and Control, No. TQGB20150026; and Kejiaoxingwei Project of Suzhou, No. KJXW2016004.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: We state that all the final research data in this study will be shared for use by other researchers, and no additional unpublished data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Dr. Ai-Lan Qin, Department of Infectious Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, 899 Pinghai Road Gusu District, Suzhou 215000, Jiangsu Province, China. cnailanqin@163.com
Telephone: +86-512-67780365 Fax: +86-512-67780365
Received: November 26, 2016
Peer-review started: November 28, 2016
First decision: December 28, 2016
Revised: February 21, 2017
Accepted: April 12, 2017
Article in press: April 12, 2017
Published online: June 7, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: This study investigated the levels, ratios, and clinical significance of T helper 17 (Th17) cells and regulatory T (Treg) cells in the peripheral blood of patients with autoimmune liver disease (AILD). The results suggested that an imbalance in the Th17/Treg ratio plays an important role in the pathogenesis and development of AILD. A high Th17/Treg ratio appears to predict poor short-term prognosis in patients with AILD in the active stage.