Experimental leishmaniasis is widely used to study the effector functions of T helper cell subsets in vivo. Healing and nonhealing Leishmania major infections have been correlated with T helper 1 and T helper 2 responses, respectively. In the present study, we determined T cell effector functions ex vivo, without any further restimulation and compared them to those obtained following antigen-specific restimulation in vitro. Our results show that T helper cell responses are significantly less polarised when determined ex vivo as compared to those measured after restimulation in vitro. Moreover, the differences in CD4⁺ T cell proliferation observed between healer and nonhealer strains of mice differed ex vivo and in vitro. Our results suggest that determination of both ex vivo as well as in vitro T cell responses are crucial to characterise immune responses during experimental leishmaniasis.

中文翻译：

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对愈合和不愈合利什曼病中 T 细胞反应的评估揭示了离体和体外 T 辅助细胞极化的差异

实验性利什曼病被广泛用于研究体内T 辅助细胞亚群的效应功能。愈合和非愈合利什曼原虫主要感染分别与 T 辅助 1 和 T 辅助 2 反应相关。在本研究中，我们在体外确定了 T 细胞效应器功能，没有任何进一步的再刺激，并将它们与体外抗原特异性再刺激后获得的功能进行比较。我们的研究结果表明，与在体外再刺激后测量的相比，离体测定的 T 辅助细胞反应的极化显着降低。此外，CD4 ^+的差异在离体和体外观察到的治愈者和非治愈者小鼠品系之间的 T 细胞增殖不同。我们的研究结果表明，体外和体外 T 细胞反应的测定对于描述实验性利什曼病期间的免疫反应至关重要。