Subpopulations of human T lymphocytes in patients with Hodgkin's disease before and after treatment.

Circulating T gamma and T mu cells enumerated in the peripheral blood of 51 untreated Hodgkin's disease (HD) patients and 66 treated HD patients tested after few months to more than 3 years of remission, brought about by radiation and/or chemotherapy. 53 age matched normal healthy individuals were studied as controls. Untreated HD patients showed significant increase in T gamma cells (p less than 0.001) and decrease in T mu cells (p less than 0.001) when compared to normal donors. The abnormal percentages of T cell subsets did not correlate with the severity of the disease. A progressive partial restoration in the proportion of these two subsets of T lymphocytes was seen in the disease free condition. However, even after 3 years of remission the recovery was not equivalent to controls. There was no correlation between the recovery of T gamma and T mu cells with the modality of treatment.