Interleukin 21 Correlates with T Cell and B Cell Subset Alterations in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease characterized by alterations of the B cell subset, global regulatory T cell (Treg) depletion, and an increase in Th17 cells. Interleukin 21 (IL-21) plays a critical role in T cell and B cell homeostasis. Our objective was to determine the implication of IL-21 and IL-21-producing CD4+ T cells in the pathogenesis of SLE. METHODS: Twenty-five patients with SLE and 25 healthy donor controls were included. Analysis of CD4+ T cells producing IL-21, Th1, Th2, Th17, Treg, follicular helper T (TFH) cells, and B cells was performed in peripheral blood, and levels of cytokines were measured in culture supernatants. RESULTS: Circulating CD4+ T cells producing IL-21 were markedly expanded in patients with SLE compared to controls and were correlated with increased Th17, decreased Treg, and increased memory B cells. CD4+ T cells producing IL-21 were composed of CXCR5+ and CXCR5-CD4+ T cell subsets. Both IL-21-producing CXCR5+CD4+ T cells and CXCR5-CD4+ T cells were increased in patients with SLE, the CXCR5-CD4+ subset correlating with Th17 cells and Treg, while the CXCR5+CD4+ subset was correlated with alterations of the B cell subset. The CXCR5+CD4+ subset comprised mainly circulating Bcl6+CXCR5+CD4+ TFH cells that were markedly expanded in patients with SLE and were correlated with increased circulating Bcl6+CXCR5+ germinal center B cells. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that IL-21, produced by distinct cellular CD4+ T cells, correlates with alterations of T cell and B cell subsets in SLE, and that targeting IL-21 could provide beneficial effects on both T cell and B cell alterations.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".