Deficiency of programmed cell death 4 affects the balance of T cell subsets in hyperlipidemic mice.

Programmed cell death 4 (Pdcd4) was found to be related to apoptosis upon first discovery. It was later found to play the role of tumor suppressor gene in a variety of tumors by inhibiting transcription and translation. Recently, it has been proposed that it may play an important role in some inflammatory diseases and in the immune response. In our previous study, deficiency of Pdcd4 was found to attenuate the formation of atherosclerotic plaques. This might be because deficiency of Pdcd4 may increase IL-10 expression and lipoautophagy by macrophages and attenuate the formation of foam cells. However, the effect of Pdcd4 on the subsets of T cells in hyperlipidemic mice still remained unclear. In the present study, results showed that Pdcd4 deficiency decreased the percentage of CD8+ T cells and increased that of regulatory T cells (Tregs) under hyperlipidemic conditions both in vitro and in vivo, which may be due to the reduced expression of co-stimulatory molecules CD28 and CD137, and the enhancive expression of co-inhibitory molecules CTLA-4. These results indicated that endogenous Pdcd4 promotes immune response mediated by T cells through regulation of the co-stimulatory molecules expression, which may contribute to the development of advanced atherosclerotic plaques. The current work provides new data to understand the role of Pdcd4 in different T cell subsets under hyperlipidemic microenvironment.