There are little information about Th17 cells and cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL), due to an important effect of Th17 cells on immune response, it is worth to explore the role of Th17 on CL. The purpose of this study was to assess Th17 population in patients with acute vs. chronic CL lesions in comparison with skin samples collected from healthy volunteers in an endemic region of Old World CL. A total of 49 patients with clinical manifestations of chronic (n=16) and acute (n=33) CL lesions were recruited. The clinical diagnosis of CL was confirmed by direct smear or PCR. Biopsy specimens from prelesional skin of non-infectious lesions of 30 healthy individuals were used as control. Tissue sections of 3µm thickness were prepared and used for immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis with primary antibody specific for Th17 associated antigen (CD161). For IHC, Envision+ (DakoCytomation) system was used and developed by using diaminobenzidine (DakoCytomation). The mean age of 33 patients with acute CL and the mean age of 16 patients with chronic CL were accordingly 45.24±16.43 and 33.56±15.87. In acute and chronic CL the mean (±standard deviation) and median (±interquartile range) were accordingly 2.92±2.21, 2.56±2.9 and 2.1±1.99, 1.54±2.81. In healthy controls the mean (±standard deviation) and median (±interquartile range) were 0.72±0.41 and 0.61±0.58 respectively. With pairwise comparison of acute, chronic and control groups, there were significant difference between acute and control (P value < 0.001), chronic and control (P value = 0.043). The results showed that there was an increasing cellular response of Th17 in both acute and chronic CL patients. Th17 was significantly higher in patients with acute and chronic CL lesions in comparison with healthy control group. However, there was no significant difference between acute and chronic infection concerning to Th17 cells.
* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.