A Positive Feedback Loop Between Th17 Cells and Dendritic Cells in Patients with Endplate Inflammation.

Background: Endplate inflammation remains a difficult disease to treat, in part due to its unclear pathology. Previous experiments showed that patients with idiopathic inflammation presented a systemic upregulation of Th17 cells. Here, we investigated how this change might affect the inflammatory environment in endplate inflammation.

Patients with idiopathic endplate inflammation displayed aberrant Th17 responses resulting in proinflammatory monocyte activation.

Endplate inflammation remains a difficult task to diagnose and treat, partly due to the absence of in-depth understanding of the cellular and molecular factors driving this condition. In the current study, we investigated the circulating immune cells in patients with idiopathic endplate inflammation. Compared to healthy controls, the patients with endplate inflammation presented a significant upregulation of Th17 cells, characterized by higher frequencies of circulating IL-17CD4 T cells examined directly ex vivo and after PMA and ionomycin (PMA/I) stimulation.