Histology and Immunophenotype of Dendritic Cells in the Human Lung

Abstract

Monocytes, dendritic cells (DC) and macrophages (MФ) play an important role in immune responses.Immunohistologically dendritic cells are characterized by their morphology (dendritic shape), enzyme histochemistry (spot or absence of acid phosphatase) and strong MHC class II expression.Other markers have been described on dendritic cells as well, for instance CD1a on Langerhans cells.The major function of dendritic cells is antigen presentation and the initiation of immune responses.Dendritic cells have been described in both the human lung^1,2,4 as well as in the rat⁵ and in the mouse¹ lung. We performed experiments to confirm the data on the presence and distribution of dendritic cells in the human lung using the earlier mentioned immunohistological criteria.In addition an array of other markers was used to further characterize the dendritic cells of the human lung.Moreover we compared the marker pattern of lung dendritic cells with those of blood monocytes, of dendritic-like cells maturated from blood monocytes and of alveolar macrophages.