Effects of Systemically Administered Hydrocortisone on the Human Immunome.
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Non-randomized interventional before-and-after trial in healthy volunteers without a reported parallel control group
PubMed 26972611 · doi:10.1038/srep23002
What was done
Twenty healthy volunteers received intravenous hydrocortisone at low (50 mg) and moderate (250 mg) doses. Researchers characterized cellular and molecular immune alterations from baseline across post-infusion time points using high-dimensional flow cytometry for 120 lymphocyte subsets and whole-transcriptome profiling.
What was found
Circulating B-cell and T-cell subsets decreased to a nadir at 4 to 8 hours post-infusion and rebounded above baseline at 24 hours, whereas natural killer cell counts remained stable. Whole-transcriptome profiling demonstrated downregulation of NF-κB, apoptosis, and cell death signaling transcripts preceding lymphocyte population changes, alongside activation of glucocorticoid receptor and natural killer cell signaling transcripts. The abstract reports no numerical values or effect sizes.
Why it matters
This study provides a high-resolution temporal map of how systemic corticosteroids acutely alter circulating human immune subsets and gene transcription in vivo, showing differential kinetics between adaptive lymphocytes and natural killer cells.
Limits
The sample size is small (n = 20) and restricted to healthy volunteers. The abstract does not report a parallel placebo control group, randomization, exact numerical results, or long-term clinical endpoints.
Cited by
- supports Cortisol alters the expression of approximately 25% of the human genome, including many genes involved in inflammation.