Clonal populations of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells in patients with multiple myeloma and paraproteinemia.

Journal article

Patients with paraproteinemia have abnormalities in their T-cell subsets including inversion of the CD4:CD8 ratio and increased expression of activation markers. Recently, distortions in T-cell receptor (TCR) TCRAV and TCRBV gene segment expression have been reported, although the significance of these observations is unclear given the finding of clonal populations of CD8+ T cells in healthy elderly individuals. We have used an extensive range of TCR V-region-specific monoclonal antibodies to assess TCRAV and TCRBV expression in patients with myeloma and paraproteinemia. TCR sequence analysis was used to assess the clonality of expansions and 3-color fluorescence-activated cell sorting analysis determined the phenotype of the expanded populations. The patients show novel oligoclonal expansions within the CD4+ subset and show an increased frequency of CD8+ expansions. Oligoclonal CD4+ T cells belong to the rare CD4+CD28- T-cell subset, a phenotype associated with granular morphology. CD45RA and CD11b are expressed on many of the CD8 T-cell expansions. Comparison of T-cell receptor sequences from two T-cell clones in one patient suggests a possible role for a common peptide antigen in the generation of the expansions. Further work is needed to identify the relevance of such T cells to the B-cell proliferation.

Authors: Moss, P; Gillespie, G; Frodsham, P; Bell, J; Reyburn, H

• Journal: Blood
• Volume: 87
• Issue: 8
• Pages: 3297-3306
• Publication date: 1996-04-01
• EISSN: 1528-0020
• ISSN: 0006-4971
• Language: English
• Keywords: Molecular Sequence Data; Humans; Gene Rearrangement, beta-Chain T-Cell Antigen Receptor; Lymphocyte Count; Aged; Middle Aged; Flow Cytometry; Paraproteinemias; Clone Cells; Multiple Myeloma; Amino Acid Sequence; CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes; Base Sequence; CD4-Positive T-Lymphocytes; CD4-CD8 Ratio; Cell Separation