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Cutaneous lymphocyte‐associated antigen expression in children with atopic dermatitis and non‐atopic healthy children
Author(s) -
Campbell D. E.,
Kemp A. S.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
pediatric allergy and immunology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.269
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1399-3038
pISSN - 0905-6157
DOI - 10.1034/j.1399-3038.1999.00042.x
Subject(s) - atopic dermatitis , medicine , immunology , peripheral blood mononuclear cell , antigen , lymphocyte , atopy , allergy , biology , biochemistry , in vitro
Cutaneous lymphocyte‐associated antigen (CLA) is a cell surface glycoprotein which has been implicated in the homing of lymphocytes to cutaneous sites. It is postulated to play an important role in T‐cell migration to skin in atopic dermatitis; however, the expression of CLA in both normal children and children with atopic dermatitis has not been extensively studied. If CLA expression on T cells were important in the traffic of lymphocytes to atopic dermatitis skin lesions, it might be expected that the proportion of CLA + T cells in unstimulated peripheral blood from children with atopic dermatitis would be elevated. We have examined the proportion of CLA + T cells in children with atopic dermatitis and non‐atopic age‐matched controls. The proportion of CLA + T cells in non‐atopic children was highly associated with and increased with increasing age ( r = 0.88, p < 0.001). There was no difference between the proportion of T cells expressing CLA in the unstimulated PBMC from children with severe or mild/moderate atopic dermatitis and age‐matched non‐atopic controls (p = 0.18, p = 0.3, respectively). Despite this, children with atopic dermatitis did show evidence of perturbation of CLA expression, as unlike the non‐atopic children the proportion of CLA + T cells in the atopic children did not correlate with age. These findings suggest that while CLA expression may play a role in atopic dermatitis, other as yet undefined surface markers are likely to principally determine the migration of T cells to skin in atopic dermatitis.