Western Society of Periodontics

Laboratory Studies

Volume Number 4, 1995

Studies on the phenotypic and functional characterization of peripheral blood lymphocytes from patients with early-onset periodontitis

The aim of this study was to assess whether aberrant lymphocyte profiles could be implicated in the etiology of patients with different forms of periodontitis. Researchers took 54 patients, 14 with juvenile periodontitis (JP), 18 with rapidly progressive periodontitis (RPP), 22 with adult periodontitis (AP), and 33 with a healthy periodontium (HP). They took peripheral blood from patients prior to treatment and cultured the mononuclear cells. The results showed that none of the subpopulations were found to be significantly different from healthy controls, with the exception of a high CD4/CD8 ratio in all patient groups. The AP group had depressed percentages of CD3-positive cells. Immunological parameters were compared with age in the HP group, and no significant associations were noted for blastogenesis against CD3 mAb, PWM, IgG, or IgM production, with the exception of the association between CD4/CD8 ratios and age. It was noted that in some patients and HP, there were some extreme values (high or low CD4/CD8 ratio), suggesting that there were wide subject variations in all groups. This study showed that aside from the wide intradiagnostic variations in the lymphocyte profiles examined, there were no significant differences between patient groups and HP groups with the exception of high CD4/CD8 ratio and a depressed percentage of CD3-positive cells. Early onset periodontitis patients seemed to show similar lymphocyte profiles of peripheral blood compared to HP. [M.C.R.]