Study on the Immunostatus of Monocytes in Blood of Chemically Wounded Soldiers in the Previous Imposed War by Applying Surface Markers

Background & Objective: During the previous imposed war, Iranian soldiers were exposed to mustard gas and are still suffering from numerous problems such as recurrent infections, respiratory dysfunction, increase in incidence of leukemia and lymphoma as well as increase of Atypic lymphocyte in blood. These may be due to destructive effect of mustard gas on bone marrow and the function of phagocytes. In this study the number and the fuction of monocytes were investigated.

Materials & Methods: In this retrospective study peripheral blood samples were collected from 75 chemically wounded patients plus 10 people as control group. CBC, flowcytometric results and other features were used in classifying the patients into three groups of mild, moderate, and severe. The results were evaluated by CD 14 and HLA-DR methods. Variation analysis and Scheffe tests were used in data analysis.

Results: The results showed a significant difference of WBC between severe and control group (P<0.05). The percentage of CD14⁺ and CD14⁺ /CD16⁺ cells showed no significant difference among three groups compared to control group (P>0.05). CD14⁺ /HLA-DR⁺ cells in level 0.1 , Fprob=0.052 of moderate group compared to control group showed a significant increase but in severe group had a sharp fall.

Discussion: It seems that the trend of generating monocytic cells in bone marrow has no problem but their function in getting back to full activity have some problems. The increase of WBC in severe group is probably due to chronic infections and pulmonary traumas. Investigating other immunity cells and their interrelation and studying the effect of microorganisms in such patients on markers’ incidence can be helpful in clarifying this problem.