Impact of immune checkpoint molecules on FoxP3+ Treg cells and related cytokines in patients with acute and chronic brucellosis

Table 2 Comparison of Treg subsets and serum cytokine level frequencies in brucellosis patients and healthy controls

	Acute patients N = 34	Chronic patients N = 15	Healthy controls N = 29	Kruskal–Wallis test P-value^a
Treg⁺ T cells (%)^b	1.40 (0.86–2.04)	1.95 (1.54–3.28)*	1.30 (0.77–2.16)	0.021
Treg⁺ CTLA-4⁺ T cells (%)	0.41 (0.22–0.65)	0.66 (0.40–1.05)*	0.27 (0.17–0.59)	0.014
Treg⁺ GITR⁺ T cells (%)	0.105 (0.028–0.190)*	0.159 (0.088–0.265)*	0.004 (0.002–0.010)	< 0.0001
Treg⁺ PD-1⁺ T cells (%)	0.25 (0.19–0.36)*	0.31 (0.25–0.54)*	0.14 (0.11–0.28)	0.001

Data are reported as median (Q1–Q3), and Q1 and Q3 represent the first and third quartiles, respectively
*P < 0.05 compared to healthy controls (Bonferroni’s multiple comparisons test)
^aKruskal–Wallis tests were used for comparisons between groups (acute patients, chronic patients, and healthy controls)
^bTregs, proportion of CD4⁺ CD25⁺ FoxP3⁺ T cells among CD4⁺ cells

ISSN: 1471-2334