Soluble (PD-1) and Autophagy protein (ATG-5) in patients with tuberculosis

mmune checkpoints such as programmed cell death protein (PD-1) and autophagy-related protein 5 (ATG5) can directly affect the immune response and thus, interfere with infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). This study aimed to determine the role of soluble ATG5 and soluble PD-1 proteins in tuberculosis (TB) patients. The study included a collection of 90 blood samples (47 samples from patients with confirmed tuberculosis and 43 samples from age and gender-matched healthy subjects to estimate the concentration of soluble autophagy (ATG-5) and programmed cell death protein (PD-1). Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was used to estimate the serum levels of these markers. The median value of ATG5 level in patients was 2.08 µg/ml, which is higher than the level of the control group (median = 0.93 µg/ml) with a highly significant difference. Similarly, the median value of PD-1 level in patients was 259.4 ng/ml (range 107.76-924.25 ng/ml), which was higher than that of the control (median = 146.4 ng/ml, range = 50.32-1117.1 ng/ml) and with a highly significant difference. It can be concluded that both soluble ATG5 and PD-1 increased significantly in patients with TB compared with controls. Keywords: tuberculosis, M. tuberculosis, Autophagy, Programmed cell death protein-1