Purine nucleoside phosphorylase, a possible histochemical marker for T-cells in man.

A procedure is described for the histochemical detection of purine nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP) activity in circulating lymphocytes of man. The number of PNP-positive cells, as evaluated on smears of Ficoll--Hypaque purified cells, correlated well with the number of E-rosette-forming cells of the same blood samples of healthy and diseased people with normal or abnormal numbers of E-rosettes. In healthy people, the number of PNP-positive cells was within the range of 70-80% of the total lymphocyte population, whilst the corresponding E-rosette-forming cells were scored between 60-75%. Patients with unusually low or high E-rosettes had equally low or high numbers of PNP-reactive cells. More substantial evidence for the presence of PNP activity in T-cells and not in B cells was gathered from experiments in which PNP activity and surface membrane immunoglobulins (SMIg) were simultaneously demonstrated on the same preparation. These results showed, on the one hand, that the bulk of lymphocytes that are reactive for PNP do not reveal SMIg and, on the other hand, that most Ig-bearing cells were unreactive for PNP.