Dendritic cells from chronic hepatitis B patients can induce HBV antigen-specific T cell responses

Table 1 Phenotype of DCs from HB patients and normal donors (n = 10,%, mean ± SD)

DC Antigen	Positive DCs of HB patients	Positive DCs of normal donors	P
CD86	89.89 ± 1.14	91.17 ± 3.41	0.633
CD80	36.86 ± 2.30	59.87 ± 6.31	0.021
CD1a	23.25 ± 7.04	32.92 ± 4.58	0.405
HLA-DR	97.29 ± 1.09	97.11 ± 1.14	0.852
CD83	23.25 ± 7.34	33.18 ± 11.12	0.265

Table 2 Memory immune responses of PBMCs from patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB), acute hepatitis B (AHB) and normal donors (mean ± SD)

Group	n	Percent CD8+T cells secreting cytokines
		IFN-γ/CD8	IL-2/CD8	TNF-α/CD8
CHB	7	0.18 ± 0.14	0.13 ± 0.05	0.37 ± 0.18
AHB	4	4.26 ± 2.49	4.80 ± 2.23	4.57 ± 2.29
Donor	6	0.28 ± 0.13	0.59 ± 0.27	0.68 ± 0.33
P valuea		0.019	0.024	0.010
P valuec		0.013	0.031	0.010

^aP < 0.05 AHB vs CHB.

^cP < 0.05 AHB vs Donor.

Table 3 CD8⁺T cell immune responses induced by peptide-pulsed DCs (mean ± SD)

Group	n	Percent of CD8+ T cells secreting cytokines (%)
		IFN-γ/CD8	IL-2/CD8	TNF-α/CD8
CHB1	7	0.28 ± 0.15	0.46 ± 0.13	0.68 ± 0.15
CHB2	4	0.59 ± 0.39	0.74 ± 0.16	1.52 ± 0.38
P valuea		0.043	0.049	0.028

1: T cells induced by unpulsed DCs; 2: T cells induced by pep-tide-pulsed DCs; a: comparison of CHB¹ and CHB².