Research

NK cell compartment in patients with coronary heart disease

Łukasz Hak^1* , Jolanta Myśliwska^1* , Joanna Więckiewicz^1* , Krzysztof Szyndler^2* , Piotr Trzonkowski¹ , Janusz Siebert³ and Andrzej Myśliwski¹

¹  Department of Histology and Immunology, Medical University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland

²  Academic Clinic of Cardiosurgery, Medical University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland

³  Department of Family Medicine, Medical University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland

author email corresponding author email* Contributed equally

Immunity & Ageing 2007, 4:3doi:10.1186/1742-4933-4-3

Published:	8 May 2007

Abstract

Background

Viral and bacterial infections have been considered as a risk factor for Coronary Heart Disease (CHD). NK cells, as a first line of defense against those infections, may play a role in CHD development. Thus, the main aim of our study was to determine NK cell compartment in patients with CHD undergoing coronary artery by-pass grafting.

Results

Ninety three patients with CHD were included into the study; the control group consisted of 49 healthy volunteers. As compared to controls, CHD patients had lower NK cytotoxic activity. CHD group had also a decreased absolute number and percentage of total NK cells and CD3-CD56dim cytotoxic NK subset. In addition, we observed tendency toward lower percentage of the CD3-CD56bright regulatory NK subset and CD3-CD56+IFN-γ+ cells in CHD patients.

Conclusion

These data indicate that CHD is associated with an impairment of NK cells compartment.