PREDOMINANT EXPANSION OF V-GAMMA-9/V-DELTA-2 T-CELLS IN A TULAREMIA PATIENT

We describe a 58-year-old man with tularemia and expanding (gamma)delta T cells in his peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) (32.7% of total PBL). In the present work, we analyzed the T-cell receptor V(gamma)/V-delta repertoire of these cells by making use of the polymerase chain reaction and flow cytometry and found that they were mostly CD4- CD8- CD3+ V(gamma)9/V-delta-2+. The sequence analysis of 16 cDNA clones encoding the V(gamma)9-J region revealed that the V(gamma)9-Jp combination was strikingly overrepresented but that the junctional (N) region was heterogeneous. This suggested that the (gamma)delta T cells in PBL from a patient with tularemia were polyclonally expanded.