Irregular Cytokine Pattern of CD4+T Lymphocytes in Response toStaphylococcus aureusin Patients with Wegener's Granulomatosis

The initial stage of Wegener's Granulomatosis (WG) is often marked by symptoms of infection and it has been postulated that a bacterial infection could be the aetiologic factor of this disease. The objective of our work was to investigate T-cell-mediated immunity in WG by testing proliferative responses on bacterial antigens and particularly Staphylococcus aureus. We investigated the bulk proliferative response of peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) from patients with clinically active WG to gram-positive bacteria and purified proteinase 3 (PR-3), the major target antigen of c-ANCA. We generated S. aureus-specific PBL-derived T-cell lines and T-cell clones (TLC). In two WG patients 27 TLC we…