Immune Deficiency

Immune deficiency

Immune deficiency can result in impaired cellular or antibody-mediated immune responses. Individuals with immune deficiency experience recurrent infections due to common and uncommon infectious agents, or cancers. The immune defect may be present at birth or may be induced by immunosuppressive drugs which are used to prevent transplant rejection or treat autoimmune disease. Immune deficiency is also encountered at the extremes of age, and with HIV infection.

Intended Use

Our current panel assesses T-cell-mediated immune function and the distribution of immune cell subsets in peripheral blood.

Purpose

General immune functional status of T-cells can be inferred from mitogen-stimulated T-cell function. Cell-mediated immunity to specific pathogens can be measured with CMV- and EBV-specific T-cells. These data can be combined with available clinical data to plan additional treatment for your patient.

Test panel

Functional T-cell responses are measured with mitogen- or antigen-stimulated expression of CD154. The test panel consists of

• Peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets.
• Mitogen stimulated T-cell responses to Phytohemagglutinin (PHA) and PMA-Ionomycin (PMA).
• Viral antigen-stimulated T-cell responses to Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and (Epstein-Barr virus).

Whole blood, 5 ml from children, 5 ml from adults in sodium heparin green top tubes, is shipped at ambient temperature overnight to Plexision’s reference laboratory. Advantages of using CD154 to identify antigen- and mitogen-specific cells are

• Rapid results: within 6-30 hours compared with 5-7 days for tests which measure proliferation.
• Highly reproducible results with non-permeabilizing detection of CD154 compared with cell-permeabilizing techniques which are used to measure intracellular cytokines.

Results

• Are reported within 30 hours after blood samples reach the laboratory. Results for CMV-specific T-cells are reported within 6 hours.
• Are reported as frequencies of mitogen-specific T- and B-cells or viral antigen-specific T-cells and their subsets. These results are reported along with reference range of frequencies from healthy subjects and organ transplant recipients. These reference ranges can help determine whether immunity is decreased or not.

References: US Patent 9606109