Decreased T cell levels in patients with warts

Abstract

Thymus-derived lymphocyte (T cell) levels were determined in 72 healthy patients who had viral warts, in 21 healthy patients who had been cured of warts from one to 15 years previously, and in 35 age-matched normal controls who had no history of warts. The mean percentage of lymphocytes that formed rosettes with sheep erythrocytes was less in patients with warts and patients previously cured of warts than in normal controls (P less than .001 and P less than .001, respectively). The number of total T cells/cu mm was decreased in untreated patients with warts (P less than .01) but was normal in patients cured of warts for more than one year. In addition, the morphology of the rosettes in the two patient groups differed from the controls; 32% had small numbers of sheep erythrocytes bound loosely to T cells compared with a rosette of numerous erythrocytes closely adherent to the T cell in 91% of the controls. The results suggest a defect of cellular immunity in many healthy patients with warts.

Immunocompetent Cells in Uterine Cervical Lesions of Human Papillomavirus Origin

“…The immunocompetent cells include three main groups; B, T and MPS cells, each being divided into subpopulations with distinct functions in the regulation of an appropriate immune reaction against a diversity of antigens, tumor antigens included [7,8,31,35]. Thus, it seemed feasible to assess the proportions of these cells locally at the lesion site, instead of enumerating them in peripheral blood [3,6,15]. Biopsies showing dysplastic changes associated (CO) and not associated (NCO) with HPV lesions were studied to find out whether any disturbances attributable to HPV infection per se could be disclosed in the behavior of any of these three cell types.…”

“…It has been known for some time that HPV lesions (warts and EV) are common in patients with impaired immunity, either primary immunodefi ciency or a secondary one due to organ transplantation for example [3,6,9,16,22,24,26], thus suggesting immunological mechanisms to play a crucial role in wart rejection [1,2, 1 1, 13, 17, 18,21,32-34], Indeed, both humoral (specific antibodies) [18,21,23,27,36] and cell-mediated immunity (CMI) [2,5,6,10,11,14,15,17,18,20,21,34,36,37] have been disclosed against the different types of HPV lesions. According to current understand ing, the impairment of CMI seems to be the main factor of predisposal for the development of HPV infection, the susceptibility with particular HPV type being related to the magnitude of the CMI defect [11].…”

Immune deficiency and multiple viral warts: a possible variant of the Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome

“…Warts, a recognized feature of the Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (Zinn & Belohradsky, 1977)) reflect diminished cell-mediated immunity. T-cell deficiency and reduced response to DNCB have been shown to be a frequent accompaniment of viral warts (Chretien, Esswein & Garagusi 1978;Obalek et al, 1980). This patient, who presented with viral warts, thus has immune deficiency with many features of the Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome but there is no platelet defect.…”

Definition of murine T helper cell determinants in the major capsid protein of human papillomavirus type 16

“…For instance, reduced cellular immunocompetence is frequently associated with the development of warts or condylomata (Brodersen et al, 1974;Morison, 1975a, b;Chretien et al, 1978;Lutzner et aL, 1983), whereas spontaneously regressing warts feature lymphoid cell infiltration (Tagami et al, 1985;Iwatsuki et al, 1986;Thivolet et al, 1982). Less is known about the humoral response.…”