Abstract
Lymph nodes obtained from 19 patients with sarcoidosis were classified into four groups according to their histological maturation stages, which were the early stage, the former mature stage, the late mature stage and the healing stage. Immunohistochemical analsyis of CD4 positive cells and CD8 positive cells were performed using monoclonal antibodies to these lymph nodes. Then the number of the positive cells per square millimeters of a granuloma was estimated using a computerized analytic system for light microscopic figures. The number of CD4-positive cells per square millimeter of a granuloma was almost constant from the early stage to the mature stage, but inclined to decrease in the healing stage; on the other hand, the number of CD8-positive cells per square millimeter of granuloma decreased extremely in the mature stage, compared with the early stage and the healing stage. Moreover the CD4/CD8-positive cell ratio in granulomas, calculated from these data, was elevated in the mature stage, compared with the early and the healing stages. From the above results, the CD4/CD8-positive cell ratio in a granuloma was demonstrated to be a valuable index for evaluating the histological activity of the granuloma of sarcoid lymph nodes. Furthermore, the decrease of CD8-positive cells in mature stage granuloma was considered to be related to the maturation of the epithelioid cell granulomas in sarcoidosis.
