Paracortical immunoregulatory subpopulations in lymph nodes from homosexual men with persistent generalized...

Homosexual patients with persistent generalized lymphadenopathy usually show an abnormal expansion of paracortical T8+ lymphocytes relative to T4+ cells in lymph nodes with reactive follicular hyperplasia (RFH). This study was designed to characterize further the paracortical lymphocyte population in homosexual men with reactive follicular hyperplasia, because T8+ lymphocytes are antigenically and functionally heterogeneous. Frozen lymph node tissue from 10 patients was evaluated. Monoclonal antibodies to T8, Leu-15, NKH-1, Leu-7, and HLA-DR antigens were employed in the avidin-biotin complex immunoperoxidase technique. With digitized morphometry, positively stained cells for each marker were counted in five 0.145-mm2 microscopic fields. Four tonsils with RFH were used as controls. Most paracortical cells were T8+ (median, 4182 T8+ cells/five fields), and values were significantly higher than those for controls (median, 1518 T8+ cells p less than 0.006). In every case there were markedly fewer Leu 15-, NKH-1, Leu 7-, and HLA-DR-positive cells than T8+ cells (median values per five fields: Leu-15, 144; NKH-1, 12; Leu-7, 3; HLA-DR, 195). Moreover, these values were not significantly different from control values. Our findings suggest that the expanded paracortical T8+ population comprises cells with the immunophenotype of cytotoxic Leu-15-, T8+ lymphocytes, rather than natural killer or Leu-15+, T8+ suppressor cells.