Reference Ranges of Lymphocyte Subsets in Healthy Individuals from Southern Iran.

Background: Lymphocyte immune-phenotyping is considered as a useful tool in diagnosis and monitoring different medical conditions. This study aimed to establish a reference value of different lymphocyte subsets in healthy individuals from southern Iran.

Methods: Flow cytometric method was used to determine the frequency of T cells, helper T cells, cytotoxic T cells, activated T cells, NK cells, NKT cells, and B cells in peripheral blood of 86 healthy subjects from southern Iran.

Results: Regardless of gender, the mean percentage of the lymphocyte subsets have been observed as T cells (69.2 ± 8.84%), B cells (11.88 ± 4.14%), T helper cells (39.85 ± 7.75%), T cytotoxic cells (33.97 ± 6.64%), activated T cells (6.67 ± 3.60%), NK cells (12.56 ± 7.32%), and NKT cells (5.07 ± 2.83%). The ratio of CD4+/CD8+ was found to be 1.22 ± 0.4. An insignificant difference was found between lymphocytes of male and female. The percentage of helper T-cells has demonstrated a positive correlation and the percentage of cytotoxic T-cells and NK cells have il-lustrated a negative correlation with age.

Conclusions: The results provide normal reference values of peripheral blood lymphocyte subsets in healthy individuals from southern Iran with the age range of 15 - 55 years old. Moreover, the results support this approach that reference values of lymphocyte subsets should be provided for each population. The reference range value of circulating lymphocytes is a powerful tool for monitoring and/or clinical management of immune related disorders.