@article{15657,
  keywords = {Antigens, Bacterial, Cell Adhesion, Cells, Cultured, Histocompatibility Antigens Class II, Histocompatibility Testing, Humans, Interleukin-2, leprosy, Lymphocyte Activation, Monocytes, Mycobacterium leprae, T-Lymphocytes, Thymidine},
  author = {Nath I and Sathish M and Jayaraman T and Bhutani L K and Sharma A K},
  title = {Evidence for the presence of M. leprae reactive T lymphocytes in patients with lepromatous leprosy.},
  abstract = {<p>Evidence for the presence of Mycobacterium leprae reactive T cells in many lepromatous leprosy (LL) patients was obtained using in vitro antigen-induced lymphoproliferative responses. (1) Co-cultures of T enriched cells from LL patients when combined with 2 h adherent cells (AC) from HLA-D compatible tuberculoid leprosy individuals showed significant levels of 3H-thymidine incorporation in the presence of soluble and integral M. leprae antigens. (2) More interestingly, autologous T cell + AC co-cultures also showed significant improvement in antigen-induced lymphoproliferation in nine of 16 lepromatous patients. Insignificant improvement was observed in similar co-cultures of tuberculoid leprosy patients. (3) Addition of exogenous, purified human interleukin-2 (IL-2) to antigen stimulated PBMC from some lepromatous patients showed the best improvement in terms of overall 3H-thymidine incorporation, indicating that lepromatous patients possess T cells which can differentiate to an IL-2 responsive state. Significantly, the level of proliferation varied within the group. A proportion of clinically similar lepromatous patients failed to show improvement by any of the above methods.</p>},
  year = {1984},
  journal = {Clinical and experimental immunology},
  volume = {58},
  pages = {522-30},
  month = {1984 Dec},
  issn = {0009-9104},
  language = {eng},
}