HUMORAL RESPONSE IN ACTIVE TUBERCULOSIS

Cojocaru Elena¹, Lunca Catalina^{2, *}, Cojocaru Cristian³

¹Lecturer, Morpho-Functional Sciences II Department, Faculty of Medicine, "Grigore T. Popa" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi 700115, Romania - ²Lecturer, Department of Preventive Medicine and Interdisciplinarity, Faculty of Medicine, "Grigore T. Popa" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi 700115, Romania - ³Lecturer, Medical III Department, Faculty of Medicine, "Grigore T. Popa" University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Iasi 700115, Romania

Introduction: The humoral immune response in tuberculosis has been understudied. Although most of the studies describe the cellular immune mechanisms, there are data which suggest that the serum immunoglobulin level may be useful in diagnosing and stratification of the TB patients. We aimed to investigate in adult TB patients the serum level of the IgG, IgA, and IgM in order to identify their role in the progression of the disease.

Methods and material: A group of 38 patients diagnosed with tuberculosis and 12 control subjects participated in the study. The parameters analysed were IgG, IgA, and IgM serum concentration at the initiation of the study (T0) and after 2 months of the TB treatment (T2). Analysis was performed to test the differences of immunoglobulins level between controls and TB patients and in the TB study group between T0 and T2, respectively.

Results: Mean immunoglobulins level was significantly higher in TB group than in controls for IgG (18.8±6.5 versus 11.2±2.0, p<0.001) and IgA (5.1±2.4 versus 2.7±1.1, p=0.005). The serum level of IgM was also higher, but not as significant. Furthermore, the IgG serum level was increased at T2 compared to T0, but not for IgA and IgM. 

Conclusions: Despite of the classic model of immune response, represented by cell-mediated mechanisms, humoral response could play an important role in TB. The humoral response is revealed by the increase of IgA, IgM, IgG levels in pulmonary TB patients.