Report of a WHO Scientific Group (Part 3 of 3)

Report of a WHO Scientific Group 631Acute leukaemia.Here the defect is primarily a deficiency of mature circulating polymorphonuclear leucocytes (and thus an impairment of the acute inflammatory response), which predisposes patients to infection with gram-positive pyogenic and gram-negative bacteria.(2) Cell-Mediated Immunity Defect Hodgkin's disease.Untreated patients have long been known to have increased susceptibility to the tubercle bacillus, Brucella, Listeria, Crypto coccus, and herpes zoster (varicella) virus, i.e., to obligate or facultative intracellular organisms.Resistance to these organisms, as mentioned above, depends mainly on cell-mediated immune responses, and these responses are characteristically deficient in Hodgkin's disease.Patients frequently fail to show delayed skin hypersensitivity to antigens to which they have been previously exposed, and also often fail to develop delayed hypersensitivity when exposed to new antigens.Antigen-specific and PHA-induced lymphocyte transformation may be deficient even in early stages of the disease.There may also be a prolonged skin-allograft rejec tion time.Sarcoidosis.This disease is frequently associated with an absence of delayed skin hypersensitivity and with prolonged skin allograft survival.Patients may have either impaired lymphocyte transformation on expo sure to specific antigens and PHA and/or defective M IF production.However, there is no apparent increase in the incidence of infection with facultative intracellular organisms.