Subsets of blood, spleen and recirculating lymphocytes in man.

Lymphocyte subpopulations were characterized in human blood and spleens. In addition the spleens were perfused by a closed extracorporeal perfusion system under almost physiological conditions. Lymphocytes released from the spleen during perfusion were taken to be representative of recirculating lymphocytes. B lymphocytes were classified by their surface immunoglobulin, T lymphocytes and T lymphocyte subsets by cytochemistry, sheep red blood cell rosette formation and in some experiments by monoclonal antibodies. In the blood 71 +/- 4.3% of the lymphocytes were rosette forming cells and 23.3 +/- 3.8% B lymphocytes. In the spleen 49.8 +/- 3.6% were T and 53.3 +/- 2.1% were B lymphocytes. In three spleens the mean number of OKT3+ lymphocytes were 27.6 +/- 7.0% OKT4+ 8.6 +/- 1.4% and OKT8+ 13.7 +/- 2.2%. The ratio of T helper to T suppressor lymphocytes was 0.67 for the spleen and 1.7 for the blood. The lymphocytes released from the perfused spleen showed a similar distribution pattern of surface markers to that of the splenic subpopulations.