Altered functional B-cell subset populations in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome compared to Healthy Controls

Altered functional B-cell subset populations in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome compared to Healthy Controls
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cei.12043/abstract 

A.S. Bradley,
B. Ford,
A.S. Bansal*
DOI: 10.1111/cei.12043

"Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a heterogeneous disorder of unknown aetiology characterised by disabling fatigue, headaches, sleep disturbance and several other symptoms. The onset of CFS may follow a viral infection or period of stress. Patients with CFS do no have hypogammaglobulinaemia, predisposition to recurrent bacterial infections or symptoms of autoimmunity. To date, defects in B-cell numbers or function have not been shown in the literature. However, treatment with anti-B-cell therapy using Rituximab has recently shown benefit to CFS patients. We therefore postulated that patients with CFS had a subtle humoral immune dysfunction, and performed extended B-cell immunophenotyping. We undertook a detailed characterisation of the proportions of the different B-cell subsets in 33 patients with CFS fulfilling the Canadian and Fukada criteria for CFS and compared these with 24 age and gender matched healthy controls (HC). CFS patients had greater numbers of naïve B-cells as a % lymphocytes - 6.3 % versus 3.9 % in HC (P=0.034), greater numbers of naïve B-cells as a % of B-cells - 65 % versus 47 % in controls (P=0.003), greater numbers of transitional B-cells - 1.8 % versus 0.8 % in controls (P=0.025) and reduced numbers of plasmablasts - 0.5 % versus 0.9 % in controls (P=0.013). While the cause of these changes is unclear, we speculate whether they may suggest a subtle tendency to autoimmunity."