Neonatal blood lymphocyte subpopulations: a different perspective when using absolute counts

We compared the absolute counts of lymphocyte subpopulations in 15 neonates, and 9 adults using the whole lysed blood technique with 15 different triple immunostainings. To obtain accurate absolute lymphocyte counts in neonatal cord blood samples, the flow cytometric 'lympho-gate' was corrected for the erythroid cell contamination by normoblasts and unlysed erythrocytes. In contrast to earlier studies where relative frequencies were reported, we found that the major difference between neonatal and adult lymphocyte subpopulations concerned the much larger pool of naive 'untriggered' cells in neonates, standby for participation in primary immune responses.