Functional and phenotypic analysis of T cells cloned from the skin of patients with Behcet's disease

ABSTRACT

Activated T lymphocytes often accumulate in the dermis of patients with active Behcet's disease [BD] and may play a role in the development of skin lesions. We propagated and cloned these cells directly from skin biopsies in two active BD. The cloning frequency estimates were f = 0.20 T cells delived from the skin of BD versus f = 0.68 for autologous blood T lymphocytes. All of the 12 skin-derived BD clones were CD4+. Clonal analyses performed with CD4+ clones from BD patients showed that all skin-derived clones synthesized interferon-gamma [IFN-gamma 80%], glycosarninoglycan- stimulatorty factor [GAG 11%], when induced in vitro by concanavalin-A [ConA]. Skinderived clones produced tumor necrosis factor-alpha [TNF-a] at 60% level. Our results demonstrate that T lymphocytes obtained from the skin of patients with BD synthesized cytokines which could modulate functions the BD skin immune system