Effect of dexamethasone on expression of adhesion molecules on CD4+ lymphocytes

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Despite the widespread use of corticosteroids in asthma therapy, little is known of the effects of corticosteroids on cell surface markers involved in T lymphocyte activation and adhesion. We used flow cytometry to analyze the effects of 1, 10, and 100 nM dexamethasone on expression of markers on resting and phytohemagglutinin (PHA)-stimulated peripheral blood CD4+ T lymphocytes. Expression of the leukocyte common antigen CD45 was significantly (P = 0.016, n = 3) increased from an average mean fluorescence intensity of 215.8 [95% confidence intervals (CI): 100.5, 463.5] on cells from unstimulated cultures to 334.2 (CI: 167.9, 663.7) on cells from PHA-stimulated cultures after 70-h incubation. At the same time, the percentage of cells also expressing the CD45RO isoform, a marker of memory T lymphocytes, increased significantly (P = 0.0006, n = 3) from 54.4 +/- 1.3% (unstimulated) to 92.8 +/- 0.6% (stimulated). Dexamethasone had no significant effect on expression of CD45 or CD45RO, including the observed changes. Dexamethasone also did not affect expression of the beta 1-integrin VLA-4. These results suggest that corticosteroids do not modulate the cell surface expression of these molecules involved in CD4+ T lymphocyte activation, adhesion, and recirculation.