Surface markers on lymphoid tumor cells were studied in 58 patients with ATL and 55 with PTCL. A high positive rate (91%) of anti-ATLV/HTLV-I test in PTCL suggested that most patients with PTCL in this study were strongly associated with ATL. Surface antigens (T3, T4, T6, T8, T9, T10, and Ia) were detected by indirect immunofluorescence methods using a panel of OK-monoclonal antibody series. The results were summarized as follows.
1. ATL and PTCL were subdivided into 4 categories by T4 and/or T8 expressions; T4+, T8+, T4•T8+, and T4•T8- groups. Surface phenotype in PTCL was considerably heterogenous and 31, 7, 8, and 9 patients were distributed among these subgroups, respectively. Almost all of ATL patients showed T4+ surface phenotype, except for two with T4•T8- and one with T4•T8+ on node samples.
2. T3 expression, which is specific to almost all of the normal T cells, was observed only a part of patients with ATL (35/58) and PTCL (19/51). More interestingly, no patients with T3 were observed in the T4•T8- phenotypic subgroup.
3. A majority of PTCL patients with T9 or Ia belonged to the histologic subgroups of large cell type and pleomorphic type. On the other hand, T10 expression was observed mainly in patients with medium-sized cell type and ATL. In patients tested for these three markers simultaneously, 10/33 in ATL and 13/20 in PTCL were positive to one of these markers at least, but only 3 and 2 cases showed double and triple markers, respectively.
4. Some shifts of surface markers were observed between different sites of organs and different stages of the disease. The shift to gain of loose T4 or T8 was of paticular interest about the phenotypic diversity of T4 and/or T8 expressions in ATL and PTCL.
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