NKT细胞在动脉粥样硬化中的作用

Roles of NKT cells in atherosclerosis

然杀伤T细胞(natural killer T cell,NKT细胞)是一种特殊的淋巴细胞亚群,具有部分T细胞和NK细胞的特征。与这些细胞不同的是,NKT细胞不仅能够识别醣脂类抗原,还在激活后产生促炎症因子和抗炎症因子。由于这些特性,NKT细胞在炎症和免疫方面的研究越来越热。动脉粥样硬化是一种受免疫调节的炎性疾病,因此对NKT细胞在该疾病中作用的研究也逐渐开展起来。

Natural killer T cell（NKT cell） is a specialized subset of lymphocytes,which shares with some characteristics of both T cell and Natural kill cell（NK cell）.Nevertheless,unlike both of them,NKT cell can recognize glycolipid antigens,and produce some pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines on activation.Due to these characteristics,more and more researches about NKT cells in inflammatory and immune aspects are turned up.It is becoming very clear that atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease with both innate and adaptive immunity in pathological mechanism.Therefore,researches on roles of NKT cell in the disease are getting hot.