Lymphocyte immunophenotyping at the Centers for Disease Control: the program and special studies.

Lymphocyte immunophenotyping has been done at the Centers for Disease Control since 1981. The technology is constantly evolving, and changes have been instituted to keep up with and improve this technology. In the last 7 years we have analyzed approximately 8300 specimens from patients and persons at risk in projects related to the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Though several subsets of lymphocytes have been found to be increased or decreased in HIV infection, no lymphocyte determination is more sensitive than CD4 alone in predicting the outcome of human immunodeficiency virus infection.