REGULATORY B CELL PHENOTYPE IN PATIENTS WITH CHRONIC CHAGAS DISEASE UPON T. CRUZI STIMULATION

GIRARD, MAGALÍ C; BEATI, PAULA; FERNÁNDEZ, MARISA; CHADI RAÚL; GÓMEZ, KARINA A; ACEVEDO, GONZALO R; HERNÁNDEZ VÁSQUEZ, YOLANDA

San Miguel de Tucumán

Congreso; LXVII Reunión Científica Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Inmunología; 2019

Chronic Chagas disease (CCD) caused by T. cruzi infection is associated with an imbalance between an excessive inflammatory reaction and a defective immunomodulatory profile caused by host-parasite interaction. Despite the growing importance of regulatory B cells in many malignancies, the role of these population remains elusive in CCD. Here, we used flow cytometry to evaluate the phenotype of peripheral blood B cells, isolated from CCD patients with or without cardiac involvement, according to their expression of CD19, CD24, CD38 and CD27. Cells were incubated with or without T. cruzi lysate, and/or CpG and CD40L, and IL-10 production was also assessed by intracellular cytokine staining (ICS). In order to overcome the absence of subset-specific hallmark membrane markers, we performed an automated and non-supervised analysis method called flowPeaks, based on k-means algorithm for data clustering. flowPeaks identified five clusters according to the simultaneous assessment of the fluorescent markers mentioned above. We found that in T. cruzi-stimulated conditions, CD19highCD27lowCD24low B cells were diminished in CCD patients compared to non-infected donors (p