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Updated: May 2, 2026
Discrimination of Seven Immune Cell Subsets by Two-fluorochrome Flow Cytometry
Published on: March 5, 2019
Comparison of reverse transcription quantitative real-time PCR, flow cytometry, and immunohistochemistry for
Anders Ståhlberg1, Pierre Aman2, Linda Strömbom1
1Sahlgrenska Cancer Center, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden ; TATAA Biocenter, Odinsgatan 28, 411 03 Gothenburg, Sweden.
Abstract:
In healthy humans, 60-70% of the B lymphocytes produce kappa light chains, while the remaining cells produce lambda light chains. Malignant transformation and clonal expansion of B lymphocytes lead to an altered kappa : lambda expression ratio, which is an important diagnostic criteria of lymphomas. Here, we compared three methods for clonality determination of suspected B cell lymphomas. Tumor biopsies from 55 patients with B cell malignancies, 5 B-lymphoid tumor cell lines, and 20 biopsies from patients with lymphadenitis were analyzed by immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, and reverse transcription quantitative real-time PCR. Clonality was determined by immunohistochemistry in 52/53 cases, flow cytometry in 30/39 cases, and reverse transcription quantitative real-time PCR in 33/55 cases. In conclusion, immunohistochemistry was superior to flow cytometry and reverse transcription quantitative real-time PCR for clonality identification. Flow cytometry and reverse transcription quantitative real-time PCR analysis has complementary values. In a considerable number of cases tumor cells produced both kappa and lambda light chain transcripts, but only one type of light chain peptide was produced.
