Premium
Defective natural killer cell activity and deficient production of interferon‐γ in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia
Author(s) -
WAKIGUCHI HIROSHI,
KUBOTA HARUO,
HISAKAWA HIROAKI,
FUJIEDA MIKIYA,
KURASHIGE TAKANOBU
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
pediatrics international
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.49
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1442-200X
pISSN - 1328-8067
DOI - 10.1111/j.1442-200x.1994.tb03201.x
Subject(s) - cytotoxic t cell , medicine , immunology , natural killer cell , interleukin 21 , lymphokine activated killer cell , interferon , lymphoblastic leukemia , natural killer t cell , cell , leukemia , t cell , cancer research , biology , immune system , in vitro , biochemistry
Natural killer (NK) cell activity, OK‐432‐augmented‐NK cell activity, concentrations of interferon‐γ (IFN‐γ) in the culture supernatants of lymphocytes stimulated with OK‐432, and subsets of NK cells and memory T cells were analyzed in 42 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) receiving maintenance chemotherapy. Natural killer and augmented‐NK cell activities, and concentrations of IFN‐γ in the supernatants of cultured lymphocytes, were significantly lower in the patients with ALL than in age‐matched control children. Among the NK cell subsets, proportions of CD57 + cells in the patients with ALL were significantly higher than in the controls, and proportions of a memory T cell subset (CD4 + CD29 + T cells) in the patients were also significantly higher than in the controls. These results suggest that the function of NK cells and memory T cells that are considered as IFN‐γ producing cells, may be defective in ALL, and that CD57 + cells and CD4 + CD29 + cells may be resistant to or recover rapidly from suppression by cytotoxic chemotherapy.