The Importance of T Cells in Preventing AutoImmune Diseases
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Associate Professor Barbara Fazekas de St. Groth of The Centenary Institute is a leader in inflammatory bowel disease research. She has demonstrated the importance of T cells in preventing human autoimmune diseases. Her study was published in the July issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine released on July 7, 2006.
Her study was conducted with 38 patients with Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease and 43 healthy individuals. Associate Professor Fazekas and her colleagues found that the healthy controls had twice as many T cells as those with Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease. T cells are disease-fighting regulatory cells.
Associate Professor Fazekas says that it is important that young people have a higher T cell count because young people with lower T cell counts are much more susceptible to autoimmune diseases. Professor Fazekas is quoted as saying, "Our results also indicate that the activity of these cells is increased in IBD patients during the later stages of disease in an attempt to fight it."
All forms of IBD are usually diagnosed in children and young adults. In Australia there are about 100,000 cases. There is no known cure.
Associate Professor Fazekas says, "Regulatory T cells have previously been difficult to quantify in humans and conventional methods could identify fewer than a third of the total number. The blood test we have developed allows us for the first time to accurately count the number of regulatory T cells in the body.”
Sophisticated flow cytometry equipment at the Centenary Institute is what made the break through possible. This equipment allows every cell to be identified and sorted on an individual basis…something that has been an impossibility until now.
"The ability to detect regulatory T cell deficits in inflammatory diseases such as IBD means that we can now identify individuals at risk of developing disease. The test can also be used to assess the effect of new preventative treatments in the future”, says Associate Professor Fazekas.
To evaluate the risk of disease in patients, the researchers are using the test to study regulatory T cell levels in autoimmune, inflammatory and allergic diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and eczema, as well as, Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease.
Contact Information for Professor Barbara Fazekas de St. Groth http://www.medfac.usyd.edu.au/people/academics/profiles/fazekas.php
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