Imbalanced expression of transcription factors FOXP3 and RORγt in patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria

Objective To investigate the role of regulatory T (Treg) / T helper type 17 (Th17) cells in the pathogenesis of chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU).Methods Eighty-nine patients with CSU were enrolled in this study,including 48 in active stage and 41 in remission stage.Forty-eight health check-up examinees,who were collected from the community hospitals in Guangzhou city,served as the healthy controls.Fluorescence-based realtime quantitative PCR was performed to determine the expression of transcription factors FOXP3 and RORγt in PBMCs from these subjects.Results Compared with the patients with CSU in remission stage and healthy controls,the patients in active stage showed a significantly higher level of FOXP3 mRNA (0.57 ± 0.19 vs.0.11 ± 0.21 and 0.13 ± 0.23,both P ＜ 0.05),but a significantly lower level of RORγt mRNA (0.43 ± 0.39 vs.0.89 ± 0.40 and 0.87 ± 0.43,both P ＜ 0.05).Conclusions The expression of Treg cell regulator FOXP3 increases,while the expression of Th17 cell regulator RORγt decreases in patients with CSU,suggesting that the imbalance between Treg and Th17 cells induced by the interaction between FOXP3 and RORγt may be involved in the pathogenesis of CSU. Key words: Urticaria;  T-lymphocytes, regulatory;  Th17 cells;  Transcription factors