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Blood, 21 May 2009, Vol. 113, No. 21, pp. 5134-5143. Prepublished online as a Blood First Edition Paper on March 17, 2009; DOI 10.1182/blood-2008-11-190769.
IMMUNOBIOLOGY Cortisol and epinephrine control opposing circadian rhythms in T cell subsetsDepartments of 1 Neuroendocrinology, 2 Internal Medicine, and 3 Anatomy, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany Pronounced circadian rhythms in numbers of circulating T cells reflect a systemic control of adaptive immunity whose mechanisms are obscure. Here, we show that circadian variations in T cell subpopulations in human blood are differentially regulated via release of cortisol and catecholamines. Within the CD4+ and CD8+ T cell subsets, naive cells show pronounced circadian rhythms with a daytime nadir, whereas (terminally differentiated) effector CD8+ T cell counts peak during daytime. Naive T cells were negatively correlated with cortisol rhythms, decreased after low-dose cortisol infusion, and showed highest expression of CXCR4, which was up-regulated by cortisol. Effector CD8+ T cells were positively correlated with epinephrine rhythms, increased after low-dose epinephrine infusion, and showed highest expression of β-adrenergic and fractalkine receptors (CX3CR1). Daytime increases in cortisol via CXCR4 probably act to redistribute naive T cells to bone marrow, whereas daytime increases in catecholamines via β-adrenoceptors and, possibly, a suppression of fractalkine signaling promote mobilization of effector CD8+ T cells from the marginal pool. Thus, activation of the major stress hormones during daytime favor immediate effector defense but diminish capabilities for initiating adaptive immune responses.
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| Copyright © 2009 by American Society of Hematology Online ISSN: 1528-0020 | |||||||||