Factors affecting E-rosette forming ability in peripheral lymphocytes of insulin dependent diabetics

Abstract

Poorly controlled insulin dependent diabetics showed impaired E-rosette forming ability compared to sex and age matched normal controls (34.8 + 3.1, n = 31 vs 55.5 _+ 1.7, n = 33; p < 0.001; mean + SEM). The reduction of E-rosette cells % was not related to the duration of diabetes, nor to fasting blood glucose levels. Incubation of lymphocytes from a subsequent series of 17 insulindependent diabetics with insulin (100 ~tU/ml) plus glucose (100 mg/100 ml) significantly increased Erosette formation (37.6 _+ 3.3 vs 47.0 _+ 2.2; p = 0.01); conversely glucagon (0.1 ~tg/ml) significantly impaired E-rosette forming ability of normal lymphocytes (51.5 + 3.6 vs 44.5 + 4.2; n-17; p < 0.01). No difference was observed in cAMP content of normal and diabetic lymphocytes, nor was Erosette forming ability related to intracellular cAMP content. Incubation with increasing glucose concentrations (up to 500mg/100ml) did not affect Erosette forming ability of normal lymphocytes. Incubation of normal lymphocytes with diluted (1:10) serum from sex and age matched insulin dependent diabetics impaired E-rosette forming ability to the level found in diabetics (61.1 + 2.9 vs 39.7 _+ 4.4; p < 0.001). The results of these in vitro experiments show that insulin and glucagon exhibit opposite effects on E-rosette forming ability and that undefined factor(s) present in diabetic serum may affect this T-cell function.

Neutrophil and Monocyte Adherence in Diabetes mellitus, Alcoholic Cirrhosis, Uraemia and Elderly Patients

“…Cells of the mono cyte-macrophage series, however, have additional roles of antigen presentation and immunoregulation, and impairment of monocyte function may result in wider immunological deficiencies, including defects in cell-mediated immunity. Indeed, such defects have been reported in patients with alcoholic cirrhosis [49,56], uraemia [6,30,39,45] and perhaps in diabetes mellitus, although this remains controversial [11,51], The results of the present studies allow us to dem onstrate the feasibility of measuring adherence in clinical research, and that the nylon fibre microcol umn technique is readily applicable to such investiga tions. Most laboratory tests for phagocyte function include the use of a stimulus to activate phagocytes, e.g.…”

“…In this report, we have applied this technique to the study of diseases in which increased susceptibility to infection and phagocytic dysfunctions are well-docu mented features; these are diabetes mellitus [3,5,11,23,35,37,42,48,51]. alcoholic cirrhosis [10,15,17,26,34,49,52,55,56] and uraemia [1,4,6,25,30,36,38,39,45,46], Many of our patients were elderly, and although phagocytic cell functions do not seem to de cline to any extent with age [20,21], elderly patients were included in this study to act as another set of controls, and also because no report is available on neutrophil adherence [41], and only one report [22] is available on monocyte adherence in such patients.…”