Antibody dependent and spontaneous lymphocyte mediated cytotoxicity in normal subjects, patients with SLE, and malignancies.

Antibody dependent and spontaneous lymphocyte mediated cytotoxicity was studied in healthy subjects and patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and metastatic tumours. The purified peripheral blood lymphocytes of healthy subjects exerted a similar cytotoxic activity on allogeneic K-562 and xenogeneic chicken erythrocyte targets in the antibody dependent and spontaneous lymphocyte mediated cytotoxicity tests. There was a stronger correlation between the cytotoxicity measured in the two allogeneic assays than between allogeneic and xenogeneic tests. Allogeneic systems using K-562 targets were more sensitive to changes in cytotoxic activity in systemic lupus erythematosus and metastatic tumours than was the xenogeneic chicken erythrocyte assay.