Research Article Increased Peripheral Proinflammatory T Helper Subsets Contribute to Cardiovascular Complications in Diabetic Patients

Copyright © 2014 Ru-xing Zhao et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Background. Coronary atherosclerotic heart disease (CHD) is one of the major concerns in type 2 diabetes (T2D). The systemic chronic inflammation has been postulated to bridge the increased risk of cardiovascular disease and T2D. We formulated that increased peripheral proinflammatory T helper subsets contributed to the development of cardiovascular complications in diabetic patients. Methods. The frequencies of peripheral total CD4+ T helper cells, proinflammatory Th1, Th17, and Th22 subsets were determined by flow cytometry in diabetic patients with or without CHD