Functional and phenotypic analysis of T lymphocytes cloned from the skin of patients with systemic sclerosis

SUMMARY Activated T lymphocytes often accumulate in the‘ower dermis of patients with systemic selerosis (seleroderma) any may play a role in the development of dermal libresis. We propagated and cloned these cells directly from skin biopsies in four of eight cases of early, antreated systemic selerosis with diffuse seleroderma. The cloning frequency estimates were f – 0.20 and f – 0.48 for T cells derived from the skin of two patients versus f ‐ 0.68 and f ‐ 0.96 for autologous blood T lymphocytes, All but one of 24 skin‐derived selerederma clones were CD4 + . Clonal analyses performed with CD4 + clones from patients and normal controls showed that all but one skin‐derived clones synthesized either laterferon‐gamma (60%), glycosantinolgycan‐stimulatory factor (26%) or both (9%) when induced in vitro by a nitrogen, concanavalin A, but not by antologous dermal fibroblasts. In contrast, blood‐derived clones had a different functional phenotype. All skin‐derived clones produced tumour accrosis factor‐alpha. Our results demonstrate that T lymphecytes obtained from the skin of patients with systemic selerois synthesized cytokoines which could modulale functions of human dermal fibroblasts.