CD56dim NK cells are increased in cervical
cancer and precursor lesions while T cells are decreased
We first analyzed cytotoxic and potentially cytotoxic lymphocyte
populations in our different study groups. We observed that the
CD56dim NK cell population (Figure 1 A) was increased
in cervical cancer patients (CC group), patients with
high grade lesions (HG group), and
patients with low grade lesions (LG group) in comparison with healthy
donors (HD group). An inverse relationship was seen with
CD3+ T cells (Figure 1 C), with a decrease seen in all
patient groups. In the CD56bright NK cell population,
no significant changes were observed between groups (Figure 1 B).
When we analyzed the cell counts of individual samples, we found that
CD56dim NK cell and CD3+ T cell
percentages (Figure 1 D) were often negatively correlated (r = -0.6883;p <0.0011). That is, that the donors (from all groups,
HD to CC) with higher CD56dim tended to have lower
CD3+ T cell percentages, and the those with higher T
cell counts tended to have lower CD56dim counts. For
this reason, we decided to focus our subsequent checkpoint analysis on
both NK and T cells, with the idea that some patients might be more
polarized towards either the NK or T cell responses. No significant
correlation was found between CD56bright NK cells vs
CD3+ T cells or CD56bright NK cells
vs CD56dim NK cells (data not shown).