A study of cell-mediated immunity in type 1 diabetes using an antigen presentation assay

The ability of macrophages to present a given antigen to homologous, immune T lymphocytes was studied in 21 patients with Type 1 diabetes and in 21 healthy control subjects. The patient group was heterogeneous with a broad range of age and duration of diabetes. An antigen presentation assay consisting of a co-culture of antigen-pulsed macrophages with autologous, immune T lymphocytes was used with purified protein derivative of tuberculin as antigen. Diabetic patients had responses similar to or higher than control subjects. Nevertheless diabetic patients had a tendency to higher T-lymphocyte proliferation values with increasing age and duration of diabetes. Correlation analysis showed a marginally significant correlation (p = 0.05) between proliferation and age and a highly significant correlation (p less than 0.01) between T-lymphocyte proliferation and duration of diabetes.