Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0024312 (lymphopenia)
 4,859 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Dexamethasone Suppression Tests (DST) and measurement of lymphocyte subpopulations were conducted in 21 medically healthy elderly women with major depressive disorder and 77 healthy elderly women volunteers. Depressed women revealed significantly reduced absolute lymphocytes (p less than 0.01), T cells (p less than 0.01), and T helper cells (p less than 0.02) compared to normal elderly women. Of the depressed women, 50% had positive DSTs (postdexamethasone cortisols greater than 5 micrograms/dl) compared to 5.4% of the normal women (p less than 0.0001). Within the depressed group, patients with positive DSTs had significantly reduced absolute lymphocytes (p less than 0.05) and T helper cells (p less than 0.025) compared with depressed women who had normal DSTs. Further, a significant negative correlation was found between postdexamethasone cortisols (at both 4:00 and 11:00 PM) and absolute lymphocyte count and T helper cells. These data suggest that the hypercortisolemia seen in some patients with major depressive disorder is sufficient to alter leukocyte distribution in the peripheral circulation, particularly that of the T helper cell subset. The association between cortisol and lymphopenia appears to be more pronounced in an elderly population than in younger depressed patients.
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PMID:Lymphocyte subpopulations in depressed elderly women. 252 98

The distribution of leukocytes in the blood stream is affected by levels of circulatory glucocorticoids. Elevated concentrations of cortisol are usually associated with an increase in the number of neutrophils and a decrease in the number of lymphocytes. Since primary depressive illness is often associated with hypercortisolemia, we hypothesized that similar changes in the blood stream of depressive patients may occur. To test this hypothesis, we retrospectively compared leukocyte counts in 177 untreated depressive patients and 178 untreated schizophrenic controls. We found a significant increase in the absolute and relative numbers of neutrophils and a significant decrease in the absolute and relative numbers of lymphocytes in the depressive group. Furthermore, when compared to normative values from the general population, depressed patients showed higher frequencies of both neutrophilia and lymphopenia than the schizophrenic group. These results indicate differences in the regulation of leukocytes in depression and schizophrenia consistent with the effects of higher levels of plasma cortisol in the depressive group.
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PMID:Leukocyte regulation in depression and schizophrenia. 659 81