Skip to main content

Role of myeloid derived suppressor cells in tuberculosis infection and disease

Background

Mycobacterium tuberculosis infects 2 billion people worldwide, 90% of infected individuals are able to resist overt disease development and manifest only latent infection. Myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are a heterogeneous population of early myeloid progenitors, immature granulocytes, macrophages, and dendritic cells at different stages of differentiation. These cells have the capacity to suppress activities of adaptive immune response mediated by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells.

Methods

The frequency of MDSC(CD45+CD14+HLA dR-), Granulocyte derived MDSC (CD45+CD33+HLA dR CD14 CD11b+) and Monocyte derived MDSC(CD45+CD33+HLA dR CD14+CD11b+) was examined by using flow cytometry in pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB)(n=115) and compared with extra-pulmonary TB (ETB)(n=106), latent TB (LTB)(n=102) and healthy controls (HC)(n=73)

Results

PTB is characterized by significantly elevated frequencies of MDSC (Geometric mean [GM] of 0.5587% in PTB and 0.3095% in EP; p=0.0005); G-MDSC (GM of 0.1660% in PTB and 0.3089% in EP; p=0.0189) and M-MDSC (GM of 0.1307% in PTB and 0.0756% in EP; p=0.0128) when compared with ETB. On the other hand, there was diminished frequency of MDSC (GM of 0.5587% in PTB and 1.064% in LTB; p= 0.0060) (GM of 0.5587% in PTB and 1.187% in HC; p<0.0001) and G-MDSC (GM of 0.1660% in PTB and 0.4131% in HC; p<0.0001) (GM of 0.1660% in PTB and 0.3516% in HC; p<0.0001) in PTB group when compared with LTB and HC, respectively.

Conclusions

The data reveals that MDSC were not only induced during active pulmonary TB infection but also in latent TB and healthy controls after recent exposure to M. tuberculosis.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nathella Pavan Kumar.

Rights and permissions

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Kumar, N.P., Sridhar, R., Banurekha, V.V. et al. Role of myeloid derived suppressor cells in tuberculosis infection and disease. BMC Infect Dis 14 (Suppl 3), O18 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-S3-O18

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-S3-O18

Keywords