The relationship of defective cell-mediated immunity to visceral disease in systemic sclerosis.
Phytohaemagglutinin-induced lymphocyte transformation and circulating thymus-dependent (T) lymphocyte numbers were studied in twenty-eight patients with systemic sclerosis (SS), in fifty normal controls and eleven elderly controls. Patients with SS were found to have impaired lymphocyte transformation responses which showed a positive correlation with both the number of circulating T lymphocytes and the extent of visceral involvement by the disease. This defect of cell-mediated immunity could not be attributed to the effects of increasing age, corticosteroid treatment, iron and folate deficiency or inhibitory serum factors and may have pathogenetic implications for the disorder.
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D005260:Female; D005494:Folic Acid Deficiency / Q000276:immunology; D006801:Humans; D007111:Immunity, Cellular; D000090463:Iron Deficiencies; D007958:Leukocyte Count; D008213:Lymphocyte Activation; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D012595:Scleroderma, Systemic / Q000276:immunology*; D013601:T-Lymphocytes