Pharmaceutics (Nov 2021)

Intestinal Cellular Biomarkers of Mucosal Lesion Progression in Pediatric Celiac Disease

  • Serena Vitale,
  • Mariantonia Maglio,
  • Stefania Picascia,
  • Ilaria Mottola,
  • Erasmo Miele,
  • Riccardo Troncone,
  • Renata Auricchio,
  • Carmen Gianfrani

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/pharmaceutics13111971
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 11
p. 1971

Abstract

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Celiac disease (CD) is a chronic intestinal inflammation caused by gluten ingestion in genetically predisposed individuals. Overt-CD and potential-CD are the two main forms of gluten intolerance in pediatric patients with different grades of intestinal mucosa lesion and clinical management. For overt-CD patients the gluten-free diet is mandatory, while for potential-CD the dietary therapy is recommended only for those subjects becoming clinically symptomatic overtime. To date, specific early biomarkers of evolution to villous atrophy in potential-CD are lacking. We recently observed an expansion of TCRγδ+ T cells and a concomitant disappearance of IL4-producing T cells in the intestinal mucosa of overt-CD patients compared to potential-CD children, suggesting the involvement of these two cells subsets in the transition from potential-CD to overt-CD. In this study, we demonstrated that the intestinal densities of IL4+ T cells inversely correlated with TCRγδ+ T cell expansion (p p p p p p < 0.0006). These findings strongly suggest that the detection of TCRγδ+ and IL4+ T cells could serve as cellular biomarkers of mucosal lesion and targets of novel immunomodulatory therapies for CD.

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