The Hairy Cell: Immunological Aspects

Abstract

The interpretation of this type of study of peripheral blood is particularly difficult in HCL since HCs are present in variable, but frequently low, numbers, while mitogen-responsive T lymphocytes often predominate: the transformation of T cells in the disease is considered in Sect. 6.4.1 and the present section considers only the response of HCs. Two approaches have been used in attempts to overcome the problem of T-cell contamination. In the first, “pure” HC populations have been obtained from the peripheral blood of floridly leukaemic cases [27, 69] or from spleen [96, 211, 389], or by employing glass-adherent cells [101]. In the second approach, attempts have been made to identify the origin of the transformed cells by a number of methods: by E-rosette formation [166]; by TRAP staining [314]; or, in this laboratory, by the presence of R-L complexes at the ultrastructural level.