T-Cell Aspects of Some Neurological Diseases

Abstract—Polyneuropathies are a heterogeneous group of immune-mediated diseases, among which Guillain–Barré syndrome and chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy are the most frequent. On the contrary, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is most often considered as a disease, whose development is practically not associated with changes in the function of the immune system. This review summarizes the latest data on changes in the T-lymphocyte subpopulations and their function in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid in the aforementioned diseases. These data suggest that regulatory T cells and NKT cells may play an important role in the development of the discussed pathologies. We stress the necessity of accumulation and analysis of data on T-cell subpopulations, as well as the sequence of T-cell receptors, HLA, and CD1 in patients for the development of approaches to the diagnosis and possible therapy of these diseases.