Treg/Th17 cell balance and phytohaemagglutinin activation of T lymphocytes in peripheral blood of systemic sclerosis patients
Ekaterina Krasimirova, Tsvetelina Velikova, Ekaterina Ivanova-Todorova, Kalina Tumangelova-Yuzeir, Desislava Kalinova, Vladimira Boyadzhieva, Nikolay Stoilov, Tsvetelina Yoneva, Rasho Rashkov, Dobroslav Kyurkchiev
Ekaterina Krasimirova, Tsvetelina Velikova, Ekaterina Ivanova-Todorova, Kalina Tumangelova-Yuzeir, Dobroslav Kyurkchiev, Laboratory of Clinical Immunology, University Hospital “St. Ivan Rilski”, Department of Clinical Laboratory and Clinical Immunology, Medical University of Sofia, 1431 Sofia, Bulgaria
Desislava Kalinova, Vladimira Boyadzhieva, Nikolay Stoilov, Tsvetelina Yoneva, Rasho Rashkov, Clinic of Rheumatology, University Hospital “St. Ivan Rilski”, Department of Internal Medicine, Medical University of Sofia, 1431 Sofia, Bulgaria
Author contributions: All authors contributed equally to this work; Krasimirova E, Velikova T, Ivanova-Todorova E, Tumangelova-Yuzeir K and Kyurkchiev D performed the research; Kalinova D, Boyadzhieva V, Stoilov N, Yoneva T and Rashkov R contributed patient assessment and clinical materials; Krasimirova E and Velikova T analysed the data; Krasimirova E, Ivanova-Todorova E and Kyurkchiev D wrote the paper; Kyurkchiev D approved the final version of the article to be published.
Institutional review board statement: All peripheral blood samples were taken from patients and healthy control subjects after informed written consent and ethical permission was obtained for participation in this study. The study was reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board of University Hospital Saint Ivan Rilski, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Conflict-of-interest statement: Authors declare no conflict of interests for this article.
Data sharing statement: No additional 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: Dobroslav Kyurkchiev, MD, PhD, DSc, Associate Professor, Laboratory of Clinical Immunology, University Hospital “St. Ivan Rilski”, Department of Clinical Laboratory and Clinical Immunology, Medical University of Sofia, Ivan Geshov Str. 15, 1431 Sofia, Bulgaria. dkyurkchiev@medfac.mu-sofia.bg
Telephone: +359-2-8524957
Received: January 26, 2017
Peer-review started: February 8, 2017
First decision: May 10, 2017
Revised: May 26, 2017
Accepted: June 30, 2017
Article in press: July 3, 2017
Published online: August 20, 2017
