As showed in Table 2, despite the severer condition of septic patients
that ICU stay more than 14 days, neither Th1, Th2, Treg cells subtypes
nor their remarkable cytokines were changed obviously when compared with
patients that stay fewer than 14 days. However, both the ratio of Th17
and the IL-17 level of septic patients that ICU stay more than 14 days
were increased significantly [compared with patients that stay fewer
than 14 days, 3.20 (2.21-3.92) vs 4.32 (3.33-5.47), P=0.002 and 139.68
(98.53-162.81) vs 169.32 (131.86-206.94), P =0.02]. As a result, the
ratio of Th17/Treg of septic patients that ICU stay more than 14 days
was also increased significantly (compared with patients that stay fewer
than 14 days, 0.76±0.31 vs 0.98±0.18, P =0.001, Fig.2a). The ratio of
Th17/Treg of septic patients was positively correlated with the length
of stay in ICU (Fig.2b) and SOFA score (r2=0.2061,
Fig. 2c) and APACHE II score (r2=0.2583, Fig. 2d) when
the patients were admitted to ICU.
Table 2 Cytokines in sepsis patients with different length of
stay in ICU