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Flow cytometry: its applications to immunohaematology
Insights
Flow cytometry offers a sensitive and objective method for immunohaematology. This technique accurately detects cell-bound antibodies, minor cell populations, and cellular antigens, improving diagnostic capabilities.
Area of Science:
- Immunohaematology
- Cellular Immunology
- Analytical Cytology
Background:
- Flow cytometry, utilizing fluorescent probes, is a recent advancement in immunohaematology.
- Its application extends to detecting and quantifying cell-bound immunoglobulins, complement, minor cell populations, cellular antigens, and antibodies against platelets and granulocytes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To highlight the practical applications of flow cytometry in immunohaematology.
- To demonstrate its utility in detecting various cellular components and antibodies.
- To assess its potential for routine clinical pathology laboratory use.
Main Methods:
- Application of flow cytometry with fluorescent probes.
- Detection and quantitation of cell-bound immunoglobulins and complement.
- Identification of minor cell populations, cellular antigens, and antibodies.
Main Results:
- Successful detection of fetal-maternal hemorrhage, red blood cell (RBC) survival, chimerism, and mosaicism.
- Accurate quantitation of RBC antigens, surpassing traditional serological methods for zygosity determination.
- Sensitive and reproducible detection of platelet auto- and alloantibodies, granulocyte antibodies, and antibodies to monocytes and lymphocytes.
Conclusions:
- Flow cytometry provides a sensitive, objective, and reproducible method for immunohaematological analyses.
- Its applications in detecting cellular antigens and antibodies offer significant advantages over conventional techniques.
- Widespread availability of flow cytometers may lead to their routine integration into clinical pathology laboratories.
Abstract:
Flow cytometry, using fluorescent probes, has only recently been applied to practical aspects of immunohaematology. It has been used for the detection and quantitation of cell-bound immunoglobulins and complement, minor cell populations, cellular antigens, and platelet and granulocyte antibodies. Practical applications of detecting minor cell populations have been successful in determining the extent of fetal maternal haemorrhage; determining the survival of transfused RBCs (small and large volumes); demonstrating RBC chimaerism (e.g. following bone marrow transplantation) and RBC mosaicism (e.g. demonstration of the McLeod phenotype carrier status). A large variety of cellular antigens have been demonstrated on RBCs, platelets and white cells using flow cytometry. Quantitation of RBC antigens by flow cytometry has been found to be much more objective and accurate than the routinely used serological approaches for establishing zygosity in paternity studies. Flow cytometry has been found to be a sensitive, objective and reproducible method for detecting platelet auto-and alloantibodies, and has also been used to detect granulocyte antibodies. More recently, it has been used to detect antibodies to monocytes and lymphocytes. As flow cytometers become more commonly available, many of these applications may become routine in clinical pathology laboratories.
