Flowcytometric Assessment of Lymphocyte Subsets in Type-1 Diabetic Patients following Allotransplantation of Liver-derived Fetal Stem-cells

Background: Although the pathogenesis of diabetes type 1 (T1D) is not fully elucidated. Different clusters of lym-phocytes such as CD4+ and CD8+ T cells are involved in it. Moreover, the mechanism of how stem-cell therapy re-sults in significant therapeutic outcomes in diabetes remains obscure. In the current study, we aimed to analyze lym-phocyte subsets in patients with T1D before and after treatment with Liver-derived Fetal Stem-cells, and investigated the potential underlying immunological mechanism of therapeutic effects of stem-cell therapy. Methods: Seventy-two patients with T1D were selected for our study and underwent allotransplantation of liver-derived fetal stem-cells. Relative counts of peripheral blood T and B lymphocyte subsets were detected by the means of flow cytometry analysis. Results: Our results demonstrated that administration of fetal liver-derived fetal stem-cells resulted in significant changes in the subpopulations of lymphocytes of the patients, more specifically, levels of CD4+, CD8+, CD16+, and CD19+ lymphocytes. Conclusion: The findings of this study demonstrated that different subsets of lymphocytes significantly change fol-lowing stem-cell therapy for diabetes. As it is demonstrated that immunological mechanisms are involved in pathogen-esis of diabetes, these changes can suggest that therapeutic effect of stem-cell therapy for diabetes may be exerted via alternations in different lymphocyte subsets.