Most of the lymphocytes circulating in peripheral blood are T lymphocytes. B lymphocytes are usually sequestered in lymphatic tissues.
The subsets of lymphocytes are indistinguishable via light microscopy. Lymphocytes can be differentiated by identifying cell surface markers via flow cytometry.
The
T cell lymphocytes are cluster of differentiation (CD) positive for the following markers:
The
B lymphocytes are positive for the following CD markers:
The
natural killer (NK) lymphocytes are positive for:
Knowing which markers are present is important in HLA typing and chimerism for bone marrow engraftments to assess lineage-specific analysis for crossmatching and engraftment monitoring.
