Unification and Technical Aspects of Total T, Active T and B Lymphocyte Rosette Assays

Conditions for rosette formation of human adult T and B lymphocytes with unsensitized and complement coated SRBC respectively, have been examined in this collaborative study. Modified procedures for identifying, by rosette formation, the total T, active T and B-RFC lymphocytes are described. The procedures reported here yielded results for the percent of peripheral blood lymphocytes forming total T, active T and B-RFC for control individuals that are comparable with those previously reported. The advantage of the procedures described here are that they are 1) easy to perform; 2) highly reproducible; 3) allow for the preparation of a single lymphocyte concentration and common reaction mixture volume to be used in all three rosette assays and 4) allow for the removal of non-lymphocytic cells which would interfere with the determination of B-RFC. The use of these procedures would allow other laboratories to obtain similar values so results for controls and various types of patients could be compared.