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Hindawi, Mediators of Inflammation, (2016), p. 1-7, 2016

DOI: 10.1155/2016/7697592

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Kidney Expression of Toll Like Receptors in Lupus Nephritis: Quantification and Clinicopathological Correlations

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Objective. The study aimed at locating and quantifying Toll Like Receptor (TLR) 3, 7, 8, and 9 expression in kidney of patients with lupus nephritis (LN) and correlating them with clinicopathological features. Methods. Kidney sections from 26 LN patients and 4 controls were analyzed by immunohistochemistry using anti-human TLR3, TLR7, TLR8, and TLR9 polyclonal antibodies; the number of TLR-positive nuclei/mm2 was evaluated on digitalized images. Results. Compared to controls, LN showed a significantly higher amount of glomerular and tubulointerstitial TLR9 ( = 0.003 and = 0.007), whole and tubulointerstitial TLR3 ( = 0.026 and = 0.031), and a higher tubulointerstitial TLR7 ( = 0.022). TLR9 positively correlated with activity index ( = 0.0063) and tubular TLR7 with chronicity index ( = 0.026). TLR9 positively correlated with Renal-SLEDAI ( = 0.01). Conclusions. This is the first study quantifying kidney expressions of TLRs in LN patients; the results show an overexpression of TLR3, TLR7, and TLR9 and demonstrate a correlation with clinicopathological indices supporting a role of these mediators in the pathogenesis of LN.