I j ASIAN PACIFIC JOURNAL OF ALLERGY AND IMMUNOLOGY (1997): 15: 141-146 Flow Cytometric Analysis of T-Lym phocytes Subsets in Adult Thais I I

In the last decade, the use of flow cytometry has made pos sible the precise identification of peripheral blood lymphocytes, par ticularly lymphocyte subpopula tions, which have been linked to specific immune functions. \-2 The clinical relevance of lymphocyte population measurements (immuno phenotyping) is already established for a number of disorders and is now being investigated for a variety of other diseases. For example, the relative proportion of lymphocyte subsets may be altered in certain disease states, such as depletion of the CD4 positive subset of T-lym phocytes during the course of HIV infection.3-4 While flow cytometry promises a wide range of applica tions, the most common routine cli nical use today, is imm.unopheno typing, a procedure which counts the number of cells in specific lym phocyte subsets. Alterations in the number of cells of a specific line age, for example B cells, may sug gest a diagnosis of leukemia, lym phoma, or immunodeficiency. Ad ditionally, the system can be used t