Teriflunomide treatment reduces B cells in patients with MS
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Abstract
Objective: To study the immunomodulatory effect of teriflunomide on innate and adaptive immune cell populations through a pilot, open-label, observational study in a cohort of patients with relapsing-remitting MS.
Methods: Blood lymphocytes were isolated from 10 patients with MS before and after 3 or 12 months of treatment. Adaptive and innate immune cell subsets were analyzed by flow cytometry as follows: B cells (memory, regulatory, and mature subsets), T cells (effector and regulatory subsets), and natural killer (NK) cells (CD56dim and CD56bright subsets).
Results: Our results show that teriflunomide significantly reduces absolute counts of total CD19+ B cells and mature and regulatory B-cell subsets. T cells were affected to a lesser extent, with a trend in reduction of absolute counts for both T effector CD4+ cells (Th1, Th17 and Th1/17) and T regulatory CD8+ and CD4+ cells. Teriflunomide had no detectable effect on NK-cell numbers.
Conclusions: In our small cohort, teriflunomide treatment affects mainly and significantly on B-cell numbers, while having a milder effect on T-cell numbers. Larger cohorts are necessary to confirm these findings and understand the effect of teriflunomide on the functionality of these cells.
GLOSSARY
- EDSS=
- Expanded Disability Status Scale;
- IFNγ=
- interferon gamma;
- NK=
- natural killer;
- RR-MS=
- relapsing-remitting MS;
- Teff=
- effector T cell;
- Treg=
- regulatory T cell
Footnotes
↵* These authors contributed equally as last authors to this work.
Funding information and disclosures are provided at the end of the article. Go to Neurology.org/nn for full disclosure forms. The Article Processing Charge was funded by the authors.
- Received April 26, 2017.
- Accepted in final form August 10, 2017.
- Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the American Academy of Neurology.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND), which permits downloading and sharing the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal.
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