[Lymphocyte subsets in patients with recurrent upper airway infections].

UNLABELLED: The aim of our study was to evaluate the digressions of lymphocyte subsets in patients with recurrent upper airway infectious diseases.

METHODS

We studied 35 patients (mean of age 11.1+/-2.1 years) with recurrent upper airway infections. The first group consisted of patients, who had acute upper airway infections: rhinitis, pharyngitis, laryngitis and tracheitis more than 6 times per last year, sinusitis or otitis more than 4 times per last year. The control group comprised of 9 healthy subjects. Subsets of lymphocytes (CD3+, CD4+, CD8+, CD4+/CD8+, CD16+/56+ and CD19+) were detected by FACS Calibur cytometer.

RESULTS

We found a significantly lower count of CD4+ lymphocytes in the patients' group compared to the control group (37.5+/-1.2 vs 45.7+/-3.1% of total lymphocytes, p<0.01). We did not find any significant differences of other lymphocyte subsets between patients and control groups.

CONCLUSION

We propose that patients with recurrent upper airway infections have alterations of the cellular immunity -- decreased amount of CD4+ lymphocytes.