“…Because we used a whole-blood lymphocyte transformation assay, any change in the cellular or serum constituents of the blood could affect our results. Gross cellular changes, such as lymphopenia or leukocytosis, which are believed to cause immunosuppression in other infectious diseases (5,9,10,15), were not observed. However, there may have been functional changes in cellular subpopulations, such as increased suppressor T-lymphocyte activity, which were responsible for the immunosuppression that we observed.…”