ORIGINAL ARTICLE
CD19/22 balance relates to improvement of disease activity in systemic lupus erythematosus

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Jun Suzuki¹, Souichiro Nakano¹, Yutaka Nakairi¹, Akiko Mitsuo¹, Hirofumi Amano¹, Shinji Morimoto¹, Yoshiaki Tokano¹ and Yoshinari Takasaki¹

Received: 27 February 2006 Accepted: 24 May 2006

Abstract B cells in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are hyperactivated and B-cell receptor signal transduction may be affected by various response regulators. CD19 and CD22 play a major role as regulators of B-cell response. Therefore, we examined CD19 and CD22 expressions on B cells of patients with SLE, and how they were related to disease activity. Thirty-one patients with active SLE were selected and enrolled in this study. Evaluation of CD19 and CD22 expressions on B cells was performed prior to and after treatments with flow cytometry analysis. Disease activity was determined according to the SLE disease activity index score. CD19 and CD22 expressions on B cells in SLE patients revealed no significant differences when compared with the controls. However, improvement of SLE was recognized among patients with an increased ratio of CD22-positive cells. Our results suggest that this balance is a useful marker for determining improvement of SLE disease activity, although the CD19/22 balance does not contribute to the pathogenesis of SLE.

Key words B cell - CD19 - CD22 - Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)