1990 年 39 巻 4 号 p. 993-999
OKT4 deficiency has been recognized in patients with various diseases and healthy subjects since Bach reported this kind of patients with lepra in 1981.
It is classifiable into two types. One is an immunologic abnormality showing a lack of helper/inducer T cells which play an important role in the induction of regular immunologic function and the other is a defect of a surface marker, epitope, with intact helper/inducer T cells.
This case was a 15 years old female, having an infection susceptible tendency. On analysis of the subsets of peripheral blood lymphocytes, the proportion of OKT4 positive T cell was 0.6 % and OKT4 positive T cells showed no peak by laser-flowcytometry. But the proportion of Leu3A positive T cell was within normal range.
The lymphocyte function following stimulation of mitogen showed normal responses to PHA and ConA, but a low grade response to PWM.
This case was a type of deficiency of a surface marker, epitope, based on the finding that T cells were confirmed to exist by Leu3A and showed its normal functions.
After operation, this case presented only a slight pain for a few days, and a healing process of the extracted wound was unevenful. So, in this case, the deficiency of OKT4 positive T cell seemed to have no relationship with the infection susceptible tendency.