Characteristics of peripheral blood natural killer cells and their subsets in children with aplastic anemia
ZHAO Ying-ling
LIU Yu-hua
LU Wei
GUO Jia-yu
TAN Wen-xiu
SHI Zhuang
WANG Li-na
Abstract：Objective To analyze the characteristics of peripheral blood natural killer(NK)cells and their sub-sets in children with aplastic anemia(AA),and to explore the potential role of NK cells in the pathogenesis and progres-sion of pediatric AA.Methods Children diagnosed with AA at our hospital from March to September 2024 were en-rolled.Age-and sex-matched healthy children served as controls.Flow cytometry was used to determine the proportions of various lymphocyte populations in peripheral blood,including T cells,B cells,NK cells,and natural killer T(NKT)cells.Descriptive analyses were performed to examine relationships between NK cell subsets and hematopoietic parame-ters.Continuous variables were expressed as median(interquartile range,IQR)and compared using the Mann-Whitney U test.The Benjamini-Hochberg method was applied for false discovery rate(FDR)correction,with P＜0.05 consid-ered statistically significant.Results Seven AA patients were included.Compared with controls,AA patients had signifi-cantly lower proportions of NK cells(10.8％vs.28.2％,P=0.026 2)and NKT cells(0.92％vs.3.20％,P=0.000 6).Among NK cell subsets,the proportion of CD56^bright NK cells increased(19.0％vs.1.82％,P=0.000 6),whereas CD56^dim NK cells decreased(43.7％vs.89.8％,P=0.000 6).No significant differences were observed in T or B cell proportions(P＞0.05).Descriptive analysis suggested that CD56^dim NK cell levels tended to increase synchronous-ly with absolute neutrophil counts and the proportion of bone marrow erythroid cells.Conclusion Children with A A ex-hibit reduced peripheral NK and NKT cell counts,with NK cell subset distribution skewed toward immature cells.These changes may be associated with impaired hematopoiesis,suggesting that NK cells play a potential role in the pathogenesis of pediatric A A and warrant further investigation.
Keywords：Natural killer cellsAplastic anemiaPediatricsImmunityHematopoietic function
Publication Date：2025-11-15
Online Publishing Date：2026-01-06(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：6( 1691-1696 )