IMMUNOLOGICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF HODGKINS AND NON-HODGKINS LYMPHOMA PATIENTS WITH HIGH ANTIBODY-TITERS AGAINST EPSTEIN-BARR VIRUS-ASSOCIATED ANTIGENS

  • 1 January 1984
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 44  (3) , 1288-1300
Abstract
Nine Hodgkin''s lymphoma (HD) and 10 nonHodgkin''s lymphoma (NHL) patients with extraordinarily high anti-viral capsid antigen (VCA) titers (> 5120) were studied. Controls were 13 HD and 23 NHL patients with anti-VCA titers between 40 and 2560. High anti-VCA titers were present in NHL patients at the time of diagnosis or within 16 mo., whereas the rise of anti-VCA titers in HD patients appeared to be a late event during the clinical course of the disease (mean time from diagnosis, 68 mo.). The exceptionally high anti-Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) titers in some HD and NHL patients might be correlated to some of the EBV-specific and nonspecific parameters of cell-mediated immunity. The battery of non-EBV-specific immunological tests included the assessment of natural killer cell activity and the analysis of T-lymphocyte subclasses according to surface markers, together with spontaneous and mitogen-induced DNA synthesis and their helper or suppressor activity on PWM[pokeweed mitogen]-generated immunoglobulin synthesis. Outgrowth inhibition (OI) and leukocyte migration inhibition were used to assess EBV-specific cell-mediated immunity. The majority of the high-titer HD and NHL patients showed a drastically reduced OKT4:OKT8 ratio in their peripheral lymphocyte population. Low-titer HD and NHL patients showed no such reduction. There was no strict correlation between the number of OKT8-positive cells and suppressor activity in the functional PWM-induced immunoglobulin production test. Part of the high-titer HD patients showed defective cellular responses in the outgrowth inhibition test, directed against the proliferation of EBV-transformed (EBV-determined nuclear antigen-positive) cells. Some of them showed also a deficient leukocyte migration inhibition response to EBV-determined nuclear antigen but, interestingly, not to early antigen-VCA. In the NHL group, only 1 of the high-titer patients showed a similar defect. None of the low-titer HD and NHL patients showed such defects.