A novel study of β1- and β2-adrenergic receptors present on PBMCs, T cells, monocytes and NK cells by radioligand method: quantitation and correlations

Abstract

β-adrenoreceptor (ADRB) ligands are actively used in the therapy of bronchopulmonary and cardiovascular diseases. When using these drugs, it is important to assess changes in ADRB content in different tissues, ADRB1 in cardiovascular disease and ADRB2 in bronchopulmonary disease. Direct measurement of ADRB content in lung and heart cells is not possible in most cases. It was previously shown that ADRB2 content in peripheral blood lymphocytes (or mononuclear cells) is significantly correlated with that in myocardial cells. It has been suggested that blood lymphocytes can be used to monitor ADRB content in solid organs. However, estimation of ADRB1 content in myocardium from the content of this receptor in peripheral lymphocytes is not possible because of the low content of ADRB1 in lymphocytes. In the present study we performed simultaneous determination of ADRB1 and ADRB2 both in the total population of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and in isolated subpopulations of monocytes, T-lymphocytes and NK-cells from 23 healthy donors using the radioligand method modified by us earlier. The highest amount of ADRB2 was detected in NK cells, followed by PBMCs, monocytes and T cells (in descending order). The content of these receptors on all blood cell subpopulations was significantly correlated with each other, suggesting the possibility of using PBMCs to monitor ADRB2 in solid organs. We first detected the presence of ADRB1 in monocytes in 43% of donors and in NK cells in 35% of donors.