Effect of sera from patients with Hodgkin's disease on normal lymphocyte response to phytohemagglutinin

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The in vitro responses of normal lymphocytes to phytohemagglutinin (PHA) were determined simultaneously with normal homologous serum and serum from 63 patients with Hodgkin's disease. We have been unable to demonstrate any inhibitory effect of Hodgkin's serum on PHA response of normal lymphocytes, with the exception of one category of experiments in which sera from patients with active symptomatic disease undergoing therapy appeared to be inhibitory. The most consistent inhibition was seen with sera from patients receiving 30–40 mg of prednisone per day. These data indicate that the inhibitory effects in this group of experiments were related to the treatment rather than to the disease. This system of PHA response of lymphocytes does not provide consistently reproducible results. A number of apparently significant stimulatory or inhibitory effects of Hodgkin's serum, which were observed in the initial experiments, could not be confirmed in subsequent experiments.