Showing papers in "American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in 1973"

In vitro observations on sarcoid lymphocytes and their correlation with cutaneous anergy and clinical severity of disease

Abstract: Phytohemagglutinin-M responsiveness of lymphocytes from 16 sarcoid patients and 13 normal control subjects was studied in 72-hour cultures of lymphocytes and correlated with cutaneous anergy and clinical status. Lymphocytes from patients with extrathoracic dissemination of sarcoidosis had impaired phytohemagglutinin response as determined by [3H]thymidine uptake, by morphologic lymphoblastic transformation, and by impaired glucose metabolism. In contrast, these parameters of lymphocyte function were normal in sarcoid patients with disease apparently confined to the intrathoracic region. The severity of the disease appeared to be an over-riding factor in predicting the immunologic dysfunction of cultured sarcoid lymphocytes. Cutaneous anergy did not correlate either with the in vitro observations or with the clinical severity of disease. The in vitro occurrence of enhanced spontaneous morphologic transformation of unstimulated sarcoid lymphocytes (without increased thymidine incorporation) was observed in ...