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