Study on the relationship between changes of immune cells and TNF-α in peripheral blood of patients with multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis

Objective To investigate the relationship between changes in CD4- and CD8-positive immune cells and TNF-α in the peripheral blood of patients affected by multidrug-resistant and extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis. Patients and methods 179 patients suffering from tuberculosis treated in the Chest Hospital of Hebei from April 2010 to December 2015 were selected for the study. There were 47 cases affected by drug-resistant tuberculosis and 132 cases affected by non-drug-resistant tuberculosis. The control group included 183 healthy subjects examined during the same period. ELISA was used to compare and analyze serum levels of TNF-α, CD4- and CD8-positive cell levels, and CD4/CD8 ratio in the two groups. Results CD4- and CD8-positive cell count, CD4/CD8 ratio, and serum TNF-a were significantly higher in patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis compared with healthy controls and the non-drug-resistant tuberculosis patients (p 0.05). After treatment, the levels of TNF-a in the different groups of drug-resistant patients were decreased, except for patients with extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, whose levels were significantly decreased compared with before treatment (t = 0.648, p>0.05). The differences in the levels of TNF-α in the other groups of patients before and after treatment were statistically significant (t = 8.497, 6.258, 5.346, p Conclusions The level of TNF-α plays a critical role in the evaluation of the severity of patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis and it has a clinical value.