A pilot study to assess peripheral blood TCR β-chain CDR3 repertoire in occupational medicamentosa-like dermatitis due to trichloroethylene using high-throughput sequencing.

We exploratively characterized T cell receptor (TCR) repertoires from occupational medicamentosa-like dermatitis due to trichloroethylene (OMDT) patients to better understand the underlying pathological mechanism. We used a combination of multiplex-PCR, Illumina sequencing and IMGT/High V-QUEST to analyze the characteristics and polymorphisms of the TCR β-chain complementarity-determining region 3 (CDR3) gene in 10 OMDT cases and 10 trichloroethylene-exposed healthy tolerant controls. Compared with the tolerant controls, OMDT cases showed no significant difference in TCR repertoire diversity including repertoire breadth, highly expanded clone, and CDR3 length distribution. However, we observed several differences in TRBV/TRBJ usage and combination between the two groups, as well as some shared and unique T cell clones in the cases. The pilot study delineated some features of TCR repertoire in OMDT patients that warrant further investigation.