Abstract
Anti-lymphocyte antibodies, which have been thought to be participated closely in the course of SLE, in sera from 88 patients with SLE and 15 normal controls were detected by cell-ELISA (enzyme linked immunosorbent assay) with human lymphocyte cell lines as the antigen. The antibodies reacted with B cell line _??_Wa_??_ and T cell lines _??_P 12 (CD4-, CD8+), Jurkat (CD4-, CD8-) and Hut 78 (CD4+, CD8-)_??_ were detected in sera from 12 to 14 out of 28 patients by cell-ELISA, and each titer of anti-P 12 antibody was correlated with that of anti-Wa antibody (r=0.91, p<0.01), that of anti-Jurkat antibody (r=0.99, p<0.01) and that of anti-Hut 78 antibody (r=0.94, p<0.01). The IgM and IgG antibodies reacted with P 12 cells were detected in sera from 54 and 27 of the 88 patients, respectively. Positive rate of IgG anti-P 12 cells antibody in sera was higher than that of IgM. IgG anti-P 12 antibodies were found to be associated with decrease level of complement (CH 50) in sera (r=0.27, p<0.05) as well as lymphopenia (r=0.33, p<0.01), and all of 10 patients with SLE, who had high titer of IgG anti-P 12 antibody, had lymphopenia. By TLC-immunostaining, the antibodies in sera from 2 of 10 patients with SLE, who had high titer of IgG anti-P 12 antibody and lymphopenia, were found to be reacted with three monosialoglyco-sphingolipids and two neutralglycosphingolipids from P 12 cells.
These results indicate that anti-lymphocyte antibodies in sera from patients with SLE detected by cell-ELISA are reactive not only with suppressor T cells and helper T cells but also with another kinds of T cells and B cells by connection with surface antigens (partially glycosphingolipids) and IgG anti-lymphocyte antibodies might be related with the active phase of SLE.
