Control and resolution of leishmanial infection depends primarily on T cell-mediated immune mechanisms. The nature of the leishmanial antigens involved in eliciting T cell immunity is unknown. We have examined the pattern of peripheral blood lymphocyte responses in patients with active, healed, or subclinical leishmanial infection to fractionated leishmanial antigens using a T cell immunoblotting method in which nitrocellulose-bound leishmanial antigen, resolved by one or two dimensional electrophoresis, are incorporated into lymphocyte cultures. The proliferative and IFN-gamma responses of cells from patients with healed mucosal or cutaneous leishmaniasis were remarkably heterogeneous and occurred to as many as 50-70 distinct antigens. In contrast, responses from subjects with active, nonhealing, diffuse cutaneous leishmaniasis were either absent or present to only a small number of antigens. Control and resolution of leishmaniasis, and resistance to reinfection, is therefore associated with a T cell response to a large and diverse pool of parasite antigens. The method of T cell immunoblotting appears to offer a powerful, rapid, and relatively simple approach to the identification of antigens involved in eliciting a T cell response in human leishmaniasis.
P C Melby, F A Neva, D L Sacks
The Editorial Board will only consider comments that are deemed relevant and of interest to readers. The Journal will not post data that have not been subjected to peer review; or a comment that is essentially a reiteration of another comment.