The extraction of lymphoid cells from the human nasopharynx

No criteria exist at present for judging the quality, extent, specificity, immunological memory or degree of functional autonomy of the local mucosal immune response in humans owing to difficulty in obtaining suitable specimens for assay. This paper offers a simple, practical, atraumatic technique for the extraction of viable lymphoid cells from the human nasopharyngeal mucosa together with some preliminary figures on the numbers of cells obtained and lymphocyte responses to mitogenic stimuli. The technique is based on the collection of nasal washings with chilled saline and sufficient lymphoid cells have been collected by this method to make multiple in vitro cultures. Cultures have been maintained for over 5 days and significant blastogenic responses have been recorded suggesting that the luminal cells retain some degree of functional competence.