Table 1.

Roles of NK cell in the pathogenesis of autoimmune liver diseases.

Disease	NK cell characteristics	Roles of NK cell in the pathogenesis of disease	Reference
PBC	CD56dim/CD16pos  CX3CR1+  CXCR3+	(1) Elevated cytotoxic activity, perforin expression, and levels of plasma IL-8 (2) Increased TRAIL expression as an apoptotic inducer in portal tract damage (3) With TLR4 ligand-stimulated NK cells	[45–49, 53, 54]
AIH	CD16+CD56+  CD69+, CCR5+  CXCR6+	(1) Migration in response to the chemotactic stimuli (2) KIR gene KIR2DS1 in AIH genesis with high affinity HLA-C2 ligands	[39, 57]
PSC	CD16+CD56+	(1) Decreased cytolytic activity (2) NKG2D associated with development of CCA	[58–61]