By using dual color fluorescence analysis, peripheral T cells can be divided into four different subsets, Leu-2a+15+, Leu-2a+15-, Leu-3a'S' and Leu-3a+8-cells. The ratio of these T cell subsets in hepatitis B virusinduced hepatitis patients was studied and compared with that of controls. No significant difference was found in acute hepatitis and chronic hepatitis, but an elevation of Leu-Za'15-(29.5 k 2.8% vs. 18.8 k 4.1%, p < 0.05) as well as a reduction of Leu-2a+15+ cells (3.2 f 0.7% vs. 10.4 2 3.2%, p < 0.05) were found in fulminant hepatitis patients. In addition, serial studies of two fulminant hepatitis patients revealed that the imbalance of these two Leu-2a cells was only found in the acute phase, but not in the recovery phase. These results indicate that the imbalance of these two Leu-2a cells is associated with the clinical status of patients with fulminant hepatitis.
Infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) has several different outcomes, such as acute infection with or without liver injury or chronic infection which may develop into chronic hepatitis or into the chronic carrier state with no inflammation of the liver cells (1, 2). Since Dudley et al. (3) first hypothesized that host immune response was a possible mechanism of HBV-induced liver injury, several laboratories have investigated the mechanisms of host immune response to HBV-related antigens in HBV-induced hepatitis patients (4-11). At the same time, the utilization of murine monoclonal antibodies which can separate human T cells into phenotypically different subsets has allowed the study of quantitative changes of T cell subsets in peripheral blood (12-16) as well as in liver biopsy specimens (17,18) of HBV-induced hepatitis patients. In those studies, T cells were divided into two different subsets of helper/inducer (Thi; OKT-4 or Leu-3a) cells and suppressor/cytotoxic (Tsc; OKT-8 or Leu-2a) cells using appropriate monoclonal antibodies. The recently developed procedure of dual color fluorescence analysis was used for subdividing both Thi and Tsc into two sublineages (19,20). According to the functional studies of these T cell subsets, it is clear that Leu-2a+15+ cells suppress antigen-induced T cell proliferation (21) whereas Leu-2a+15-cells function as cytotoxic T