Analysis of in vitro lymphocyte proliferation as a screening tool for cellular immunodeficiency.

Measuring lymphocyte response to mitogens and antigens is a mainstay of screening for cellular immunodeficiency. Few reports analyze performance as a screening tool in diverse patient cohorts. We studied proliferation assays performed at Children's Hospital Boston from 1996 to 2003 using mitogens phytohemagglutinin (PHA), concanavalin A (CONA) and pokeweed mitogen, and antigens tetanus (TT) and diphtheria (DT) toxoids, and compared a subset of patients with T cell dysfunction with adult controls using receiver operating characteristic analysis.