Quantitative Peripheral Blood Perturbations of γδ T Cells in Human Disease and Their Clinical Implications

Human gamma delta T cells, which play innate and adaptive, protective as well as destructive, roles in the immune response, were discovered in 1986, but the clinical significance of alterations of the levels of these cells in the peripheral blood in human diseases has not been comprehensively reviewed. Here, we review patterns of easily measurable changes of this subset of T cells in peripheral blood from relevant publications in PubMed and their correlations with specific disease categories, specific diagnoses within disease categories, and prognostic outcomes. These collective data suggest that enumeration of gamma delta T cells and their subsets in the peripheral blood of patients could be a useful tool to evaluate diagnosis and prognosis in the clinical setting.