[Radiosensitivity of lymphocytes. Possible therapeutic impact]

Radiosensitivity of lymphocytes is related to the population under study: for B lymphocytes it depends on their degree of differentiation and for each subset of T lymphocyte it depends on their state of activation. Precise knowledge of lymphocyte, radiosensitivity could have interesting therapeutic consequences in all malignant proliferation of B or T lymphocytes. The most typical example seems to be BCLL in which normalisation of lymphocyte subsets could be localized irradiation in volume (the spleen) and in dose (a number of grays) allow the destruction of an important percentage of a malignant clone and the normalisation of the populations of OKT4+, OKT8+ subset which play a part in the pathogenesis of the disease, notably in the mechanism of certain anemias.