Detection of human mononuclear cell subsets by complement fixing monoclonal antibodies: evaluation of manual...

Manual procedures to evaluate mononuclear cells reacted with monoclonal antibodies were evaluated with respect to reproducibility, ease of execution, and cost. The immunofluorescent technique and the complement-mediated cytotoxicity test produced very similar results; however, the latter was clearly preferable in terms of cost, time-consumption, and ease of execution. Evidence is also presented that purification of lymphocytes using gradient diffusion techniques may induce an uneven selectivity within the relative percentages of T cell subsets collected for analysis.